10 Most Controversial Songs In Rock History
8. American Idiot - Green Day
During the mid '00s, living in the United States tended to feel like hell around every single corner. Still reeling after the loss sustained on 9/11, President Bush's War on Terror was not sitting well with any of the youth of America, instead feeling like a doofus looking to fight fire with fire for the hell of it. We needed a voice to say something...we just didn't know that it would come from the guys that wrote Longview,
Despite having a lukewarm reception to their last album Warning, Billie Joe Armstrong set the bar insanely high with American Idiot, which ended up calling out the President's ideologies directly. As if the title wasn't enough of a clue about how Billie Joe feels about his command in chief, he even doubles down as not being a 'part of a redneck agenda.' Aside from the nonchalant bashing, this song is an encapsulation of how most Americans felt during this time, with everything feeling scared, tense, and borderline out of control at any moment.
Keep in mind, this was also the time when not being supportive of the war felt on par with being unpatriotic with every fiber of your being. Then again, it's one of the greatest punk moves in the world to listen to what the masses have to say and saying "P*ss off...we're doing something different."