"Dont want to be an American Idiot!"

The reason I posted this thread is purely because I was talking/debateing with someone today who made the all ignorent "Green Day is anti-American" claim today. They also tried to tell me the 2004 song/album American Idiot is adressed to former President Bush.
I want to explain what the song is truely about.

"Don't want to be an American idiot.
Don't want a nation under the new media
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind fuck America."

Its clear that this part is about the media, as much of the song is. The phrase "American Idiot" is not calling America itself an idiot, but rather the arrogent idiots so intertwined in Americans pop-culture. Its speaking out against the current American dream and pop-reference to what the average American is supposed and expected to be like.

"Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue."

Again, strongly speaking against the media. Showing also Billie Joes great hate for conformity and nationality in America.

"Well maybe I'm the faggot America.
I'm not a part of a redneck agenda.
Now everybody do the propaganda.
And sing along to the age of paranoia."

Again, anti-media and conformity not anti-American.

"Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue."

"Don't want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It's calling out to idiot America."

"Welcome to a new kind of tension.
All across the alien nation.
Where everything isn't meant to be okay.
Television dreams of tomorrow.
We're not the ones who're meant to follow.
For that's enough to argue."

Point and case. This song and the album is not anti-American. Its anti-stupidity if anything.

 

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Obviously, as is anyone who was critical of Bush.

 

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What? Your sentence didnt even make sense.

 

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Funny thing, Greenday bitching about "pop" music and "american idiots". They should be thanking their stars
I mean where else can you get rich by inventing the psuedo-punk ballad. Yes, I'm sure Greenday has do deal with more than it's share of idiots. I'm not sure who else would go see them.

 

You, good sir or maddam, has impressed me. I want to see American Idiot on brodway. I've been waiting for the story of St.Jimmy and Whatsername to hit the stage

 

So they are referring to their fans, themselves, a philosophical microcosm of the entire planet.

 

Hey, what a coincidence. My school just preformed it. (I was on the technical crew

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) It's a good play.

 

I think that phenomenon has more to do with changes in media structure than audience attributes. I.e., starting in the early 1980's you have MTV and the predominance of the music video, which has been hailed by many as the death knell of the full album. Soon enough, music producers stopped expending effort on the "filler" tracks on albums and instead focussed exclusively on singles, and soon enough after that people lost interest in hearing the albums. By now you have people buying lots of music from iTunes (or just listening to radio, by air or by internet) and the whole concept of an album is largely an anachronism as far as pop music is concerned. By the time iTunes store came out, the fact that you could purchase hits without having to get the filler tracks was touted as a major feature (as if the single had never existed, or the fact of shitty filler tracks wasn't the real problem to begin with).

But go check out some genres that aren't oriented towards radio play, and the situation is vastly different. In addition to fusty adult stuff like classical and jazz, heavy metal has never lost any of its devotion to the ideal of entire albums full of solid material, often built around unified concepts or themes. Not that such is always achieved, but at least people still strive for that.

Which is to say, indistinguishable from every other would-be punk album ever produced (well, except for the ones that are more about Britain than America). I'm not a Green Day hater, but they're over a decade past their prime and never really had anything new to offer beyond bringing a strong pop sensibility to punk rock (and thereby removing the last shreds of doubt as to whether punk is truly dead). It's good that they're the only survivors the pop punk movement - they're the only ones that deserve such - and are settling into a new status as elder rock statesmen.

But the surge of recent mainstream interest in Green Day (particularly amongst middle-aged and older people with no other affinity for such things) is a day late and a buck short. It's depresses me when my parents' friends try to strike up conversations with me about how hip they are to Green Day, and doubly so when I see the blank expressions on their faces after I tell them I haven't listened to any Green Day since Dookie.

 

It seems to be as much that Dream Theater is popular amongst metal fans, than that Dream Theater is actually metal. But whatever...

It was on heavy rotation on MTV and the radio in the mid-90's. Dookie sold over 10 million discs, won a Grammy, etc. Frankly I don't understand how anyone could have missed it, which is why I'm so puzzled at this generation of people who have just now discovered them. They play pop music, for chrissakes!

Talking Heads was considered punk? I'd always thought of them as squarely new-wave. But then punk was one of those designations that sort of took on a life of its own, especially outside of the immediate scene and critics, and the distinction between it and new wave was probably never well-formed in the mind of the general public. Or maybe some of these issues only became clear in hindsight, once new-wave and other post-punk scenes had developed sufficiently distinct identities.

 

It's more than that. You need to listen to the entire album to pick up on the fact that it's a "concept album". Yet most kids these days download songs and rarely, if ever, buy complete albums.

 

Tell that to death metal. Personally I think there's a barrier presented by albums full of cookie monster screaming about sexualized cannibalism that will resist mainstreamization (indeed, I've long thought that such was exactly the point of the subject matter and album covers). Death metal is only a few years younger than new wave, so if there's a reassimilation going on, it's on a substantially longer time scale than was the case for punk rock or the various more recent genres (grunge, for example, only held out a handful of years before becoming synonymous with the mainstream).

I swear I've heard that anecdote somewhere before... There's also the famous poster called "How to Play Punk Rock" that consists of a single chord diagram.

There's something to that. Not that it's literally disco, but it seems motivated by a counterforce to punk's rejection of disco. Personally I'm kind of glad I was too young to concern myself with such things back in the early 1980's...

 

AKKk why'd you drop that bomb at the end? 3 songs is not a concept album. Yes "aqualung" the modern Diogenes of London is in the three songs, but the rest of the album is different...and no , it's not ALL against religion.

 

According to the guys in Green Day, it IS about Bush:

http://www.contactmusic.com/new/xmlfeed.nsf/story/green-day.s-george-bush-opera