Politics and Social Justice
When asked his opinion regarding whether all musicians ought to try to add a social or political message to their work, Armstrong replied that
| “ | The only people who should sing about social issues or politics are the ones who aren't full of shit. | ” |
American Idiot was released two months before former President of the United States George W. Bush was reelected, and as a result the album became protest art. Created as an anti-war album, American Idiot contains many new-age protest songs, like Holiday which was against George Bush's decision to invade Iraq. Armstrong described the song as a means by which "to battle your way out of your own ignorance".
Read more about this topic: Green Day/Genre Disputes
Famous quotes containing the words politics, social and/or justice:
“The differences between revolution in art and revolution in politics are enormous.... Revolution in art lies not in the will to destroy but in the revelation of what has already been destroyed. Art kills only the dead.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“Despair, feeding, as it always does, on phantasmagoria, is imperturbably leading literature to the rejection, en masse, of all divine and social laws, towards practical and theoretical evil.”
—Isidore Ducasse, Comte de Lautréamont (1846–1870)
“The earth is ready, the time is ripe, for the authoritative expression of the feminine as well as the masculine interpretation of that common social consensus which is slowly writing justice in the State and fraternity in the social order.”
—Anna Garlin Spencer (1851–1931)