Green Day has hit back at Elon Musk after he criticized the band for trashing former President Donald Trump.
The rock band stirred controversy during a performance at "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve," when lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong altered a line of the band's single "American Idiot" from "I'm not a part of a redneck agenda" to instead sing "I'm not a part of the MAGA agenda."
The song was released in 2004 and was originally a statement against former President George W. Bush and the Iraq War.
Taking to social media, Musk slammed Green Day for straying from its roots.
"Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it," Musk wrote on X, adding laughing emojis.
However, in an interview with Rolling Stone, Green Day's bassist Mike Dirnt took a jab at Musk while explaining why Armstrong chose to change the song's lyrics.
"Elon Musk actually is the machine. I can't take anything else from that," he said. "He's not shy about saying stupid sh** on the internet. Whatever," he said.
"The song's 20 years old, and we're Green Day. What did you expect?" he continued, adding he was glad that swapping the lyrics sparked conversations as the band had always wanted to release politically charged songs but chose to refrain from doing so under the Trump administration.
"First it was rhetorical, and then it got into conversation. Anytime you can get people talking, you're always going to have the loudest voices [heard first], and then everyone else in the room is going to figure out what it really means," he said.
On its recent album "Saviours," Green Day released a political song titled "The American Dream is Killing Me" which, according to Dirnt, was written nearly four years ago by Armstrong.
"We all knew it was low-hanging fruit," he said of releasing political songs during the Trump era. "We're not a parody of who we are, and songs like that need time to be fleshed out. If that means just sitting back and letting life happen, so be it."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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