[2005-2009 Best Songs]
Billboard Top 100, 2005: #39
Protest music. I had thought it was a thing of the past. Was the 1960s long-hair hippie band really the end of anti-war, anti-establishment music? Someone will surely tell me it was hanging around in Punk Rock all this time. Perhaps, but Holiday made it a long way up the charts. This is a song that clearly resonated with people. In 2005, many in America were coming to terms with the idea that the government campaigned for and entered us into a war (in Iraq) on false pretenses, if not out-right lies. This song tapped into that anger.
You may not agree with Billie Joe Armstrong's politics. Maybe you're the type who hates when musicians or celebrities speak politically at all. It's popular to call protest music Anti-American, especially when your side is in power. The opposite is true. There are few things more American than dissent. It's in our DNA to disagree, to protest, even to fight each other over what we believe in.
What's under-appreciated in America today is how nobody considers a Punk band shouting angry satire at the top of their lungs a threat to our institutions of our government. For the past year in the Middle East, they were arresting people and shooting at people for far less. Whether you support the Tea Party or Occupy or disagree with all of them, never forget that the right to protest is only worth anything when there are people out there passionate enough to exercise it.
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