The ever irreverent Green Day switched up the lyrics in one of the band’s songs to make a political point — again — this time targeting Vice President JD Vance with a slur in a world tour performance.
The dig was launched as the rockers kicked off the Australian leg of their Saviors tour over the weekend in the wake of the ugly shouting clash in the Oval Office against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky by President Donald Trump and Vance.
“Am I re***ded, or am I just JD Vance?” sang frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, altering the lyrics of Green Day’s song “Jesus in Suburbia” during a full performance in Melbourne of the band’s politically barbed album American Idiot.
Vance wasn’t the only one to come under fire.
Earlier in the night Armstrong asked the crowd to thunderous cheers: “Don’t you want politicians to shut the f*** up? Don’t you want Elon Musk to shut the f*** up? Don’t you want Donald Trump to shut the f*** up?”
In “Jesus in Suburbia” Armstrong also sang: “We are the kids of war and peace/From Ukraine to the Middle East” instead of: “We are kids of war and peace/From Anaheim to the Middle East.”
The band has changed lyrics in the past to speak out politically.
In January when they played in South Africa, Elon Musk’s birthplace, Armstrong changed a lyric in the lead song “American Idiot” to: “I’m not part of the Elon agenda.”
When they played New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in 2023, they sang: “I’m not part of a MAGA agenda” as opposed to “I’m not part of a redneck agenda.”
Elon Musk responded with a post on X the following day complaining that “Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it.”
