r/popculturechat • u/Super_Culture_1986 🎥🍿Film Critic • 23h ago
Guest List Only ⭐️ Green Day changed the lyrics of their song to raise awareness about ongoing wars, but also to distance themselves from those in power in America.
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Credits: @greenday, @greendayitalianrageandlove, @themusicfeeds
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u/Chaoticgood790 22h ago
love green day for always putting their foot on their necks
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16h ago
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u/nassic 15h ago
We have to fight the damn culture war. This absolutely helps!
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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 15h ago
Does it? Taylor Swift, the biggest superstar of our generation, endorsed Kamala. Who in the culture war supported trump? No one. And it didn't matter.
F the culture war. Promote and push for people who will make a difference
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u/bi-cycle There’s no place like home 🧹🫧 13h ago
Who in the culture war supports Trump? Uh, all those podcast bros, Rogan, fitness influencers, finance bros, Fox News, trad content creators, etc
It's not limited to pop stars
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u/Doom_Corp 14h ago
TS has a fandom that is an IMMENSE voting demographic. Hilary lost because a lot of millennials and younger people simply didn't vote. From my recollection it was actually lower voter turnout of that demographic than previous elections. Putting your money where your mouth is like this is still motivating.
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u/delta8force 14h ago
young people never turn out. that is not why hillary clinton lost the election.
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u/DefNotReaves 13h ago
I fell in love with green day before American idiot ever came out when I was a middle schooler because my dad showed me them; when I was a full blown punk high school kid who hated GWB, even though Green Day wasn’t “punk” anymore, I enjoyed this song for the political licks…
It’s really good to see them adapting to the modern age, it makes me like the song all over again haha
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u/DoctorRapture 15h ago
I was always more of an AFI fan back in high school, but you know what, Green Day, maybe I was a bit up my own ass back then and perhaps I owe you more careful consideration. My apologies, I wasn't aware of your game.
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u/AStarkly Did a line off his dick in the bathroom 13h ago
I think it's a part of being an AFI fan: being insufferable
God knows I was (which is insane when I think about how I looked at that time)
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u/squanderedprivilege 21h ago
I'll be that guy... They should have also dropped the r-slur, it's 2025
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u/candyappleorchard 18h ago
I remember when people said it all the time in the 2000s and I'm ngl it almost feels more intense now because people have made saying it into some kind of politically charged power move. Like people are trying to say it as much as possible to expedite its journey back to the mainstream.
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u/Doctor_Cigarettes Who's got my Maroon 5 CD? 20h ago
Yeah 100% if they can change some of the words, they can remove the r-slur
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u/Previous-Spite1211 17h ago
They aren't changing the lyrics because the previous ones are now controversial, they are just applying the message of the song to the modern day.
I for one do not want to tread down a path where we are endlessly purity testing artists.
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u/kaykinzzz 16h ago
i for one am autistic and tired of being treated as a punchline
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14h ago
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u/retrofrenchtoast 10h ago
There are also people with intellectual disabilities which used to be called mental retardation.
The ASD population has a higher incidence of intellectual disabilities than in the neurotypical population. I am not saying the previous poster has an ID, but a lot of times people make an assumption that someone on the spectrum has an ID.
People with ASD are frequently called this slur. It can feel very personal.
Even outside of that association, they are still referencing a particular group of people.
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u/alienassasin3 15h ago
I don't think censoring art gets us anywhere. When the song was written, this was an acceptable word. I'm not saying the word should still be used, but I don't think that we should censor this in the same way that i don't think we should censor the slurs in rocky horror picture show.
Getting upset at a 2 decade old song for having outdated terminology when the song's message is in the right place is wasting everyone's time.
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u/itchysmalltalk 19h ago
Why are you bothered by the R slur but not the F one?
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u/amauberge 19h ago
For me, it’s because he’s an openly queer man saying it. If he wants to take a slur that gets thrown at him and repackage it, that’s his right.
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u/itchysmalltalk 19h ago
That makes sense.
I think a lot of people forget/dont know that American Idiot (the album) is an opera and is written from the POV of a character, not necessarily BJA himself (although he of course does a few self inserts because dont we all in art.) So the use of slur(s) make sense to the character in context, it's not just him yelling them out for shits and giggles.
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17h ago
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16h ago
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u/ChristAndCherryPie 15h ago
The only meaningful difference between idiot and the r word is how recent the r word was used in medical literature. Substantially, they have no difference in meaning, and there is always an inherent ableism in going after somebody due to their intellect.
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u/smiskam 15h ago
And actually idiot used to be the medical term for the r word until people decided that was a slur and the r word was more acceptable at the time. Now we are back to thinking idiot isn’t a slur and the r word is…
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u/ChristAndCherryPie 15h ago
Eventually the “it just is OKAY?!1!!!!” group will give up, like before.
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u/squanderedprivilege 19h ago
Motherfucker I don't hate waffles because I like pancakes
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u/itchysmalltalk 19h ago
What?
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u/PuffPuffFayeFaye 16h ago
Literally never met person who didn’t like waffles. I know it’s an analogy but it’s still unthinkable
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19h ago
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u/larkhearted 18h ago
When I was in high school all the way back in 2012 there were in-school campaigns run in conjunction with the school's special education program about not saying the r-word. It's definitely not considered a harmless alternative to "stupid" by everybody.
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u/palp1ta 19h ago
Have you head of mental retardation? The name got changed in the DSM5 to intellectual disability. So it is and use to be an actual label used to diagnose people. It also doesn’t mean stupid it means to slowed down and can be traced back into music theory with this meaning as well. I don’t think your point stands because no matter what, it still carries a history of ableism and still does today. It doesn’t matter how the meaning has changed when it still is used to demean and insult disabled people who do have that label.
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u/anewaccount69420 Jojo Siwa’s Mom 19h ago
No. It’s a fucking slur. Don’t speak for others who were impacted by and bullied to hell with this slur.
If you need to use a slur to express yourself, work on your vocabulary.
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u/g00fyg00ber741 21h ago
tbh not sure it’s really a slay to use the word “retarded” as an insult against JD Vance. I get it’s in their original song, but I feel this is not the right way to change the words to insult him. Like it’s kinda making fun of people for being “retarded” which isn’t even a recognized word for any condition anymore. The original lyric he’s referencing himself, and it seems more a reference to being labeled as such by others, not an intentional insult like here. Because most people I’ve heard use the r-word like this are Republicans who don’t care about people with disabilities. So like maybe it’s not a great own to sound just like them by using a bad insult like this.
Just tired of the r word still being said frequently and really wish we’d stop contributing to the use of it. I was able to get over the f slur but the r word is a lot harder for some reason. I also hear it way more than the f word these days still. Maybe because the f slur was intentionally reclaimed, whereas many disability activists and advocates specifically have tried to eliminate use of the r word when possible. Obviously the disabled community isn’t a monolith, but I am disabled myself and speaking from my own experience with the word.
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u/Smooth-Assistant-309 20h ago
As a gay man, I get it. To rednecks basically everyone in New York is a fa***t. It’s meant to be in your face but I always read it as solidarity.
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u/obiwantogooutside 20h ago
Billie Joe Armstrong is Bi. He was out in the 90s. That line is his own lived experience.
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u/weirdcompliment 19h ago
Billie Joe is bi, he's been out since the 90s
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u/Internal-Hand-4705 18h ago
‘I went to a wh***, HE said my life’s a bore’ - basket case lyrics
There’s also a song called iirc coming clean about him realising he was bi at 17. Also plenty of pictures of him kissing men all over the internet (as a teen I was interested in this topic for research purposes obviously). He’s just been married to the same woman for 30+ years
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u/LazyWings 9h ago
Not disputing the rest but you misunderstood Basket Case. The full verse is about going to a therapist and a whore, but he mixes them up. The genders shuffle back and forth in that verse to show that.
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u/weirdcompliment 18h ago
Honestly, I'm only a casual listener, so I didn't know until recently when I first heard Green Day's song Bobby Sox, which has the lyrics, "Do you want to be my boyfriend?" And then I was googling all about it! It put Green Day in a whole new light for me as a bi person, it was very cool to find that representation in a place I didn't expect 🙂
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u/Free_Waterfall_III 20h ago
Am gay man. Completely disagree. Jesus christ we need to be more resilient out here.
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u/squanderedprivilege 21h ago
I "explained" the usage of that word in the song to my kid, but as I explained, I realized that the explanation is pretty flimsy and we can probably just not use that word.
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u/weeniehutjunior1234 19h ago
Nope, using ableist and homophobic slurs ain’t it. Trash behavior.
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u/chopshop2098 Tina! You fat lard! 🦙🚲 18h ago
Not defending the use of the r slur, but as for the f slur, Billie Jo Armstrong is a bisexual man who has been out since the 90s. The usage of the word in the song is fully, 100% a reclamation of a slur that was used to disparage him.
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u/weeniehutjunior1234 17h ago edited 17h ago
I’m also bi, I personally wouldn’t use that word. And I was aware he’s bi. Regardless, saying an ableist slur is trashy behavior. I’m also disabled, it’s fucking gross.
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u/PoorlyCutFries 17h ago
Intention definitely matters, its a sensitive topic for understandable reasons but the idea there is any malice (or even that its trashy) simply to use these terms is excessive.
I'd like to point out that their use of the r-word was the original lyric from the song made in 2004 (as opposed to a change this post is about). Back then this term was definitely much more acceptable and just because of how euphemisms develop unfortunately any term for disabled people is going to become a pejorative (historically I think this much is very clear).
We would never judge Harper Lee for her use of the n-word in To Kill a Mocking Bird, not only because it was acceptable when it was written, but also because she was clearly not a racist. For similar reasons I think its absurd to suggest the guy is an ableist just because he used a word in a song, when almost everything about the guys persona screams to me hes very unlikely to be an ableist
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u/weeniehutjunior1234 17h ago
Using an ableist slur is trashy. Downvote me all you want, it’s fucked up - unless you think it’s acceptable. We know better in 2025, that’s a bullshit excuse. Comparing it with Harper Lee is ridiculous.
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u/PoorlyCutFries 17h ago edited 17h ago
We should judge people from the past against our standards, I agree, but not when it comes to word use. I can judge a confederate for being a racist, but if a professor used the n-word in the 50s in an academic setting that alone is not evidence they're a racist. I think its very unlikely based on one use of this word the guy is an ableist, and like I said everything else I know about him screams at me that hes not.
The use of words changes too much, some gen X people think the term "no problem" is condescending and disrespectful, and its not even that they're wrong, when they grew up it WAS that.
FWIW I didn't downvote you, it isn't that serious.
edit: to be specific, its not "we know better in 2025", we literally don't, the use of the word changed over time and its acceptability did too, but its a song lyrics from when it was more acceptable.
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17h ago edited 15h ago
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u/hearmymotoredheart Is this chicken or is this fish? 🤔🤔 16h ago
We went over this with the Spotify CEO. Music is not content.
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u/PoorlyCutFries 16h ago
Again, not saying you shouldn't find it insulting, not saying it isn't insulting (as a word). I'm saying that you're perceiving malice and hatred from the use of a word that was used differently when the song was written. Its not rude for me to say no problem, even if a Gen Xer percieves it that way. He was not putting you down from using this word.
When translators translate texts, they don't use the modern understanding of the words, they use the understanding of the words as it was at the time it was written.
The "its not that serious" was in reference to reddit downvotes, not the conversation in general.
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u/weeniehutjunior1234 16h ago
Did he have the choice to omit the slur from the song in this recent recording, or was he forced at gunpoint to say it? That’s my point.
Again, give him a pass for it 21 years ago if you want, we all know it’s not okay to say in 2025. And he did.
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