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Green Day changes lyrics to skewer JD Vance with a slur

Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong also took on Elon Musk and Donald Trump

in San Francisco

Thursday 06 March 2025 05:59 GMT

Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong gets heated during a song (Myles Wright/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock)

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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?”

Billy Joe Armstrong of Greenday is all of us! We need more of this from all artists! Bravo sir!💥🔥💥 pic.twitter.com/SC36OEdWit
— Brian Cardone 🏴‍☠️🇺🇦 (@cardon_brian) March 2, 2025

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.”

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