Green Day changes lyric to hit out at Trump in New Year’s Eve performance

Photograph: Burak Çıngı/Redferns

Rock band Green Day altered the lyrics of their well-known song American Idiot to criticize Donald Trump during a televised New Year’s Eve performance.

During a set on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, the lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong, replaced the line “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” with “I’m not a part of the Maga agenda”. The song was originally released to criticize former president George Bush in 2004.

Green Day fans flocked to social media to share the live performance during the New Year’s event with host Ryan Seacrest.

This isn’t the first time the band has targeted Trump. The rock band previously scorned the former president at the American Music Awards in 2016, and responded to Trump’s indictment in August with limited edition merchandise featuring his mugshot.

The band’s musical jab at Trump comes as a US House committee investigates the former US president’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election defeat and the 6 January Capitol attack promoted by his supporters. Many critics are raising the flag over a possible second Trump administration, signaling that the second time around could be much worse.

Trump also faces criticism for using inflammatory language, such as calling his leftwing opponents “vermin”, resembling Adolph Hitler’s rhetoric.

Green Day is set to release a new album described as “an invitation into Green Day’s brain” later this month.