BANG BANG

Green Day Takes on Gun Violence with New Song ‘Bang Bang’

Band’s new single sung from perspective of mass shooter.

The band that wrote “American Idiot” in response to the George W. Bush administration is back with a new political song that takes aim at America’s gun-violence epidemic from a unique, and possibly controversial, perspective. On Thursday, Green Day released a video for “Bang Bang,” the first song from their upcoming record Revolution Radio. In the song, frontman Billie Joe Armstrong sings, "Bang, bang, give me fame. Shoot me up to entertain." Confirming that the song does come from the perspective of a mass shooter, he told Rolling Stone, “It's about the culture of mass shooting that happens in America mixed with narcissistic social media. There's this sort of rage happening, but it's also now being filmed and we all have ourselves under surveillance. To me, that is so twisted.

“To get into the brain of someone like that was freaky. It freaked me out. After I wrote it, all I wanted to do was get that out of my brain because it just freaked me out,” Armstrong added. “I don't know why someone would ever do something that horrific because I know I never would.” Due in early October, Revolution Radio will be Green Day’s first full-length LP since Armstrong entered rehab for prescription pill addiction four years ago.