“During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.” - Kurt Vonnegut
@@nullakjg767 That was pretty much my opinion, as well. What about the 90s bands that experienced a minor renaissance in the 2000s singing about the war on drugs and the rise of militarization among police? What about the skater punk music that started adding protest to their repertoire, inspired by Green Day's success? Ignoring that outliers were brought into the mainstream through protest music during this time is a little disingenuous in my opinion. I like the video. I just wish I'd seen more about the actual protest music that inundated my early university years than just "Green Day had a hit."
@@nullakjg767 I thought it was very informative and did a great job explaining why 2000s pop music was so apolitical and afraid to criticise Bush, compared to the aesthetic of 60s and 70s pop, and that very few anti-war music actually managed to "make it big". I fail to see why a video choosing to tackle that topic is a "garbage video". And Il Bastardo is right. A band whose most popular song (which isn't even anti-war) is 30 years old and has only 7 million views - isn't relevant at all to the point she's making. When the "war on errorism" album has like, 40 thousand views, and that stupid "boot in your ass" song has 40 MILLION, it's not "garbage" to make your argument that the 2000s music era didn't really have a strong, memorable, anti-war theme, and that Green Day was really the only notable exception.
@@ShortVideosRUs That kinda puts thing into perspective. While the current times aren't great, at least the US public aren't as jingoistic as they were back then, at least in terms of overseas war.
The Dixie Chicks were the only real victims of cancel culture but they were right. "Not Ready to Make Nice" is a great song about them responding to haters.
i remember a radio station just polling people if they should play a dixie chicks song after it happened. listeners said no and they played have you forgotten for the 8th time that week.
it definetly is. If anyone can, check out their new album (first one in 14 years) coming out this july 17th. The title track "Gaslighter" came out a while ago and it is some good stuff.
My Chemical Romance actually started because Gerard Way witnessed 9/11 when he was on a ferry on the way to NYC for his job. He quit his job and got in touch with his old friends to start a band.
i mean its a little frustrating that resistance songs arent in the limelight like in the past. but theres more political music than ever... even during the 2000s era. It was just pushed into more indie scenes. I for one think that if you think Green Day was the most political movements of the time.. and you think the rock against bush bands are "obscure" you're probably just not very versed in music.. not that is a bad thing or I disagree with the premise of this video. imo I don't think you can make generational sweeping assumptions and say anything meaningful.. especially since the dawn of the internet. but it is funny than green day was the most popular anti-war band at the time.
Yeah, that shocked me as well. My immediate thought was "that can't be right", then it dawned on me... and I don't think I'll be the same after that realisation 😆
The biggest factor in why youth culture and artists did not react to the “war on terror” like they did to the Vietnam war was the government didn’t institute a draft. To say that the US govt learned nothing from Vietnam is untrue. They learned that as long as they don’t institute a draft they can have their pointless wars go on largely unheeded for 20 years.
@@midnightgod123 I think that's a big part of it. Vietnam was started by a brief skirmish in the Gulf of Tonkin (though we certainly know now that it was fabricated anyway), which is so far removed from the lives of Americans it never had the personal effect that 9/11 did.
@@Tetragrammaton22 Yeah but Al Qaeda and Bin Laden had nothing to do with Iraq. Sure, Hussein was a horrible dictator, but there was no real proof that he had weapons of mass destruction, or had any intention of attacking us. The Iraqi people had no interest in being “freed” from his rule, and rightly viewed us as the aggressors. So yeah, it was an unprovoked attack, and there was no reason for us to be there.
Kerplunk and Dookie are amazing albums. Kind of went downhill after that but I've honestly never heard anybody who doesn't like at least some Green Day songs.
A lot of people hate Green Day, but even still you gotta give it to them. In a time when barely anyone was willing to make a protest song or even have a slightly anti-war sentiment in their music, they came out swinging with an entire album. And even more surprising it was a massive hit and one of the most influential rock albums since y2k. It wasn’t overly preachy, it was relatable and most importantly it was really goddamn good.
swinging with an entire album, influential, and massive hit? Really? Name one friend of yours or anyone you've ever met that has actually listened to that album and not just the 5 singles from it? I will wait lol.
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 mate I grew up with this album, I genuinely can’t think of a friend that didn’t own this album on cd. It’s good the entire way through, I don’t know why you’re being a dick
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 5 rememberable singles from an album and you’re bitching about gatekeeping lmao. god forbid they missed St. Jimmy and the songs that focus on the story more
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 Just like with any incredibly succesfull album; most people are only gonna know the 5 singles that went on to become hits. Because most people, even if they realize that an artist or an album is good, don't get into the depths of an artis unless they feel a certain connection. To argue that you're not succesfull just because this is the case, is a bit shortsighted. The fact that an album had 5 succesfull hits is telling, no doubt. Most albums get 2, 3 at best. Only the massive ones have about 40% of the tracks become mainstream. Your argument, in my opinion at least, is invalid.
That video hits such a raw nerve in me that I couldn't avoid giving the screen the finger when it came on. All the while realizing how pointless the gesture was. It's a visceral reaction.
if you need an antithesis, zack fox, eric andre, thundercat and a bunch of celebrities sang slob on me knob in the same format as those other celebs singing imagine ua-cam.com/video/gctM_22qM1Y/v-deo.html
Green Day has always been political, anti-government, and anti-authority. Even the "middling" album before American Idiot you mentioned has some of their most political songs on it. They just weren't as angry and as much of a statement as American Idiot was for its time.
They come-off more as mildly progressive liberals, than as 'anti-government' and 'anti-authority' in a more anarchist/libertarian-socialist sense. Don't know them that well though.
As someone who discovered punk through Green Day, it's something a lot of people seem to forget. Punk us a genre heavy on politics and vastly left-wing too, which is probably why it isn't that popular of a genre.
One thing I'll never forget about Green Day, is when they started getting mainstream success, they insisted their now-former label mates, Pansy Division (a band with 3 of the 4 members being openly gay, and their music is unapologetically queer) open for them on tour. In the mid 90s. They risked their mainstream success for their marginalised friends. People can say what they will about Green Day's punk cred, but that was undeniably punk of them. You can even find clips of Green Day singing a bit of one of their songs (Groovy Underwear).
I'm not some huge Green Day stan (i am *that guy* that is into "real" "underground" "punk"), but they did legitimately grow up in the punk subculture and they got their start playing tiny punk venues. They were not a manufactured product in the same way a lot of pop stars or "alternative" bands were at the time. What Lindsay Ellis describes as their big "sellout" moment (Time of Your Life) was like the 5th or 6th time they'd been through the "sellout" ringer. They were called sellouts when they played sappy pop-punk on their debut EP on Lookout. They were called sellouts when they left Lookout Records for a major label. They were called sellouts when they got massive airplay with the Longview video, and so on. The reason American Idiot made perfect sense to them was twofold -- one, i think they were kind of inured to criticism in general after so many of their peers and mentors turned on them, and two, I think they probably wanted to prove to those same people that they could still do something cool and anti-establishment. honestly, i respected the attempt, although i thought the record was kind of cheesy and under-researched and vague (i prefer political music that is specific and detailed, like Propagandhi or MDC for example). But i like that they went for it. Lord knows nobody else as big as them was bothering.
You know, conservatives act like liberals/lefties are the ones who get hyper-triggered, but now that I'm thinking about it BOTH Republican administrations of my lifetime had Eminem investigated for his lyrics.
@OnThisSideoftheSky Those are people, not politicians. Obama never had Ted Nugent investigated. Also liberals being triggered over Trump is normal. I'm so done listening to conservatives talk about the liberal reactions to 2016 like that was the highlight of yall's lives. I've seen grown men scream like that over a football game. Trump's presidency represents real problems. When conservatives get triggered its because some high school in Alabama stopped praying before assemblies. Its not at all comparable.
@OnThisSideoftheSky if we're gonna compare death counts,let's start by asking where you got your "factual number". Nevermind the fact that capitalism in the same amount of time has debatable killed far more people, or did we think all those right wing coups were bloodless affairs? In the same span of time, how many genocidal dictators has the CIA alone supported? Nevermind that you've just conflated socialism and communism. They're not the same thing, and they're not what the liberal spectrum wants. Bud, I ain't in support of communism, but if you want to be taken seriously, the "death count" arguement isn't the way to go. It's a vague 'fact' that I've yet to see a source to, and positing that only leads to the inevitable counter arguement that capitalism when taken just as vaguely responsible, may have killed more people.
can we talk about the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare? Grown ass men and women losing their shit over imaginary enemies that people in power made up to keep them complacent and dumb. oh wait...
"People finally get that 'No, not everyone will live through this, actually. And there is no guarantee that this is for now.'" Huge statement. I love this. Shivers!!
"This might actually be forever, fuck, it *will* be forever if we don't start doing something. WE THOUGHT THINGS WOULD GET BETTER BY THEMSELVES AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED."
@@harp-692 No, but the breakup of That Channel That Shall Not Be Named was pretty messy so it wouldn't be surprising if they had not really kept in touch or collaborated anymore.
It's my understanding that "Wake Me Up when September Ends" was originally intended to be about a personal loss in the life of Billy Joe Armstrong, when his father died from esophageal cancer in September of 1982. While it's also about loss more generally, and while the video does go for a slightly more political angle, that's probably the reason why it's not quite the same as "Holiday" or "American Idiot". It's not really a protest song, just an emotional song on what is otherwise more of a protest album, kind of tied into the rest because there's an overarching story being told. The fact that the month repeatedly mentioned in the chorus is the same month when the US suffered a horrific and politically/culturally important terrorist attack is, at least primarily, just a coincidence.
Yeah,it feels a bit rude to group this in with the rest. I doubt she knew or meant to, but Billie still gets messages every November 1st from people telling him to wake up over a song that's about his dad's death. It's using soldiers fighting more as metaphorical imagery for the struggle he or his dad was feeling through grief or before death and wasn't meant to be political at all
@@alicemadness999 "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" is by far the hit from the album I still hear played frequently as a recurrent, whereas I scarcely hear the other three hits from that era. And "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" is by far the most nondescript of the four songs lyrically basically being, "I'm lonely, I'm walking through this world alone, I hope someone finds me eventually but until then I'm lonely and I'm walking through this world alone................did I mention I'm lonely and walking through this world alone?"
I mean... if you disregard the evidence of what communism led to; there was no reason whatsoever for Korea or Vietnam. I feel like the argument always ends up something like, “well I guess we should just stand by and let people suffer” A five year war is a lot faster than 70+ years of sanctions. Most western people haven’t gone 24 hours without food for a single day in their life; they obviously can’t contextualize the hardship involved in surviving a centralized authoritarian government
People forget that after the Iraq war, history was almost completely rewritten, and suddenly the question was always, "Why do you love Saddam Hussein?? Why do you wish Saddam were still in power?" NOPE. Not buying it. That's NOT how the war was sold to us. It was pitched to the American people for ONE reason. Iraq supposedly had weapons of mass destruction. That's why we were supposed to attack them. That lie ultimately caused the death of a half million people. Those weapons were NEVER found, yet somehow history was largely rewritten and we all just sort of "moved on" for lack of any choice. It was bullshit before the war. It was bullshit during the war. And it was bullshit in the years after as we all just slowly forgot about it. It was a massive fraud perpetrated for reasons I still don't entirely understand. By 2005, the public had gradually turned against the war. Cindy Sheehan's protests in summer of 2005 outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX finally got some public attention and the anti-war movement at last gained the traction it should have had three years earlier. Only, it wasn't because it was a bullshit conflict based on lies. Nope, we only turned against it because it was HARD, and because a few thousand Americans died. The half million dead Iraqis counted for NOTHING to us, nor did the fact we were lied to.
A Cpt. Price quote from Modern Warfare 2 comes to mind (whether the premises of it is true or doesn't really matter) "This is for the record. History is written by the victor. History is filled with liars. If he lives, and we die, his truth becomes written - and ours is lost. Shepherd will be a hero, 'cause all you need to change the world is one good lie and a river of blood. He's about to complete the greatest trick a liar ever played on history. His truth will be the truth. But only if he lives, and we die." Granted Gen. Shepherd is not a historical person, but who's to say that there isn't that possibility especially when talking about the Iraq war.
The really crazy thing was seeing the american news media just collectively turn on a dime to support the war, completely disregard the problems with the narrative presented by the Bush administration and regurgitate the official propaganda. That really made me think twice about the supposedly free and independent US press.
Not to mention that, even if Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction, shouldn't you have gonne after the country that was ACTUALLY harboring Al-Qaeda instead?
Excellent analysis as usual, but as a journalist I was slightly disappointed Lindsay forgot to mention a huge factor in turning the public against the Vietnam war effort: it was the first war that was extensively documented in real time, not by propagandist state-sponsored films, but by independent journalism, especially photojournalism. It was the first time the reality of war was brought to light, unfiltered, in all its horror and senselessness. Take a country that's already frayed thin by having hundreds of thousands sent to die in a war nobody really understands, show them a picture of 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running naked through the streets in the wake of a napalm bombing and tell them THAT's what they're all paying and dying and losing loved ones for... yeah, people are gonna lose their shit.
Yeah, the Pentagon learnt from that lesson; with a revised strategy for "embedding" journalists in the 2000s. But one wonders if they shot themselves in the foot with that success; as not even Pentagon has benefited from the dragged out Afghan theatre, draining their traditional capacity for defending against other Great Powers. If the war's failures had been more clearly presented, it might have ended years earlier.
When it comes to the protests and the cultural side, there are two points that I think had a lot more to do with things, at least during Bush's first term. Vietnam was a political war halfway around the world to fight the spread of communism, while Iraqi Freedom was (theoretically) a response to an attack against Americans on American soil. There was a lot of anger and call for not just a response but righteous vengeance, that appeals to some people. Fighting a war against politics that at least some Americans were for, on the word of a politician is complicated. Revenge is easy and understandable to everyone. They killed us we should go kill them. The second point, though, was the draft. A lot of the people that were sent to Vietnam never wanted to be in the military, never wanted to go to war, never wanted to die at the word of a politician. With 9/11, people joined the armed forces in droves, eager to go and settle the score.
Thats awesome to hear! I feel like a lot of people look back on them as part of the "cringe" music they listened to as kids but, honestly, I think a lot of it, especially American Idiot, the album, holds up really well and what doesnt is at least kind of fun. So, it's great to hear that people are still discovering them even now. Cheers!
As an Aussie, I'm so glad us tagging along is so often forgotten. To be fair with Iraq, our government were somewhat concerned that it wasn't well thought through, but the USA may have used the ANZUS treaty if we didn't agree upfront.
@@hart-of-gold Makes me think it's too bad she didn't work in Bush's infamous "You forgot about Poland!" retort to someone questioning the absence of some key NATO players from the so-called "Coalition of the Willing".
Hi Lindsay! Combat Veteran (Iraq) here, I don't know if this helps at all, but no one seems to be asking what WE were listening to in combat. Honestly, it was such a huge array of music genres, spanning from hip-hop to black metal, however, we were super annoyed there wasn't more updated, modern music stating anti-war stances. Total honesty, we almost always listened to 60's music whenever we got ready to go out on mission, especially when flying. And for what it's worth, every single one of us directly hated that Toby Keith nonsense. lol.
I mostly listened to classical music, happy hardcore, and Scandinavian death metal records made by bands where all the members died horrifically while I was deployed to Iraq, in Afghanistan it was really more of an emo/screamo/scene playlists
Fun fact: Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at Dubya ended up running for the Iraqi Council of Representatives in 2018 and won a seat
lol oh no! Thanks for that info. I’m just learning Arabic now so unfortunately I can’t read it just yet. A shame, but as they say, don’t meet your heroes.
1. The conservative sides dislike of the Dixie Chix was so strong that even in 2010ish my middle school choir teacher strongly encouraged a group of girls not to audition for the choir show with a Dixie Chix song. 2. This video reminded me that I wrote a song in 4th grade about that time a guy threw his shoe at Bush. It was a smash hit in the elementary school and I got in trouble.
Julia - That's hilarious. Reminds me of when I wrote (and read to the class) a poem in 7th grade about Clinton getting head in the oval office. Another smash hit!
I remember when Trump got elected, we had basicall a sleep over party in our school where the 11th and 12th grade watched the election. (I live in Germany so because of time difference it was from evening to morning for us). When Trump went live with a speech one of our English teachers took of his shoe and threw it at the wall where the speech was being projected on. It was very hilarious to watch Trump getting a shoe in his face, even though sadly he couldn't feel it.
2016: hurr hurr Trump is yer pres-I-dent! Go cry me a river, libruls! 2020: noOOOO Q says you guys are great big meanie pants and Trump is still president!!! Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.
19:45 Just want to point out that, despite the drummer's views, everyone else in System is still doing good stuff. Serj is working in Armenia and has founded a charity with Tom Morrello from Rage Gainst the Machine, Daron is out there presumably doing Scars on Broadway stuff, and Shavo the bassist is currently making political hip hop with North Kingsley
Yeah, Serj has even publicly spoken out about how confused he is about the drummer's views and how irreconcilable he and the rest of the band believe his views to be. The rest of the band have some odd politics and they're less orthodox than most other highly political bands like RAtM, but they're not anywhere near Trump supporters, quite the opposite. Throwing that in there, while true undercuts the other three members of the band and undercuts the value that SoaD had to music in politics in general, which is a hell of a lot more than just BYOB. It's also a big part of the reason why there's not been any new SoaD music at all.
@@Lankpants Wasn't there like two new songs from their reunion or something, a few years back? Also, what are some of the odd politics of the other band members?
Why does "conservative = evil" to so many people? So he has different ideas on how to move forward. That doesn't make him "bad" unless you are already addicted to the CNN koolade. Only today do people ACTUALLY believe people are 'evil' because they hold different political views. Its idiotic.
the album had mainstream success but was generally considered corny and overly poppy by many fans of their earlier work. there were also a lot of rumors about them not even writing the music, IIRC, whether true or not I obviously can't say, but I can say other people were saying it.
Lindsays whole thing lately seems to be "everything sucks and is cringe and is stupid" so I'm not surprised that is the tone she also took with this video
I agree with the sentiment - no "good and meaningful art" is justifaction for any amount of suffering, and the attitude of treating it as a silver lining is shallow at best... ...but I also think it's the nature of "good and meaningful art" that a certain amount of suffering (either on part of the artist or the subject of the art) is required in order to imbue it with meaning in the first place. No one needs to hear the opinion of someone who has nothing to say, and when everything is a-ok, there kind of is nothing to say. (and do I mean "meaning" specifically; art can be all kinds of good without any meaning) Of course, the reason mainstream music got so dumb in the 2000's is because it profited from providing the illusion that everything was a-ok precisely by having nothing to say. At least sexy got brought back.
Exactly. And it's not like we're at risk of such a shortage of suffering that we need to manufacture more. Stuff like this always reminds me of this passage from Bertrand Russell: "To a man of sufficient energy, pain may be a valuable stimulus, and I do not deny that if we were all perfectly happy we should not exert ourselves to become happier. But I cannot admit that it is any part of the duty of human beings to provide others with pain on the off-chance that it may prove fruitful. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred pain proves merely crushing. In the hundredth case it is better to trust to the natural shocks that flesh is heir to. So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it."
The irony is how much a central element to the whole grunge era was itself pretty much wiping out the "big and dumb" feel of so much of the 80s. Time really is a flat circle.
There's a danger of falling into a nostalgia trap when you look at 60's protest music. Its over-represented in the music from the era that we still listen to today because it was generally more meaningful and hard-hitting than the generic pop that was around at the same time, and because the themes correspond to much-studied historical events. The reality is, there was an awful lot of apolitical, escapist music that was around at the time, and was generally more popular. It's not really fair to compare 2000's mainstream commercial pop to Creedence Clearwater Revival- there was an awful lot of mainstream commercial pop around in the late 60's as well, and also a few very successful nationalistic, pro-war songs- e.g.'The Ballad of the Green Berets', which was a US number one record for 5 weeks in 1966. Creedence infamously never had a Billboard number one record. Likewise, there were actually quite a lot of anti-war songs released in the 2000's if you look away from the mainstream, usually in genres that are known to be angry and political anyway- e.g. punk, reggae and hip hop. My personal favourites are probably 'Worlds Apart' by Texan punks ...And You WIll Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, which is just furious and disgusted, and 'Day After Tomorrow' by Tom Waits, which is just utterly heartbreaking. Neither of them remotely bothered the top 10, but I remember Waits' sing 'Day After Tomorrow' on the Daily Show, which was absolutely huge at the time.
And consider the genre of metal. Just about 80% of metal songs are political in some way, with the majority of those political songs being anti-war. P.S. My favorite type of political metal music are the ones that are anti-war and pro-soldier, which seems like it makes no sense, but to that I say look no further than Five Finger Death Punch's Wrong Side of Heaven or Avenged Sevenfold's M.I.A.
There were popular pro-war, or least anti-anti-war songs in the Vietnam era, mostly in the country/folk genre I think. I recall something with lyrics along the lines of: "goodbye darling hello Vietnam" and something about okies from some place that rhymes with okie?
Not to mention the active censorship of songs critical of the Iraq War by broadcast stations during this time period that effectively boxed many of those protest songs from getting radio play. Even still, bands like Radiohead released protest albums like “Hail To The Theif” that charted to #3 in America and #1 in the UK without any broadcast support. I’m honestly disappointed with Lindsay’s thesis here. Lots of glaring omissions of all the hip hop, indie rock, folk, jam bands, punk, and metal bands that sold massive amounts of anti-war records during this time. A discussion of Bush era protest music without any discussion of broadcast censorship is really, really lacking.
E H God when that happened I was so fucking angry, it still enrages me. Like imagine? Yeah I’d like to imagine a world where you actually do something to help people you lazy, selfish jagoffs.
Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief wasn't explicitly protest music, but it was definitely about the vibe of living in the unfolding War on Terror.
I mean the album name alone is so blunt it's laughable, I don't know how you can read it as anything other than protest music against the Bush administration.
@@c0nceited822 It is obviously a reference to Bush, but the lyrical content of the album is pretty vague compared to something like American Idiot. Also, I feel like SOAD's Toxicity could've been mentioned in this video. It came out days before 9/11 and contained in-depth criticism of America in general, so it ended up fitting into the anti-war genre.
@@thomasmihaljevic3762There, There's not really about Itaq but 2 + 2 = 5 is definitely about the government and the war on terror. Sit Down, Stand Up is also about soldiers going in to fight in Iraq.
@@E-Man5805 if I remember, it was like a thing for the creators when collaborating to be like "WoAh other creator, what are you doing here in my realm of expertise? Don't you know IM the only person to cover this subject"
@@E-Man5805 oh no, the disputes were just weird skits people did before their reviews officially started -they went something like: 'hey, I'M the music guy on this site, YOU'RE the 2000s film person! You're taking my business away!'. there was no actual beefs between reviewers (except... the obvious one).
I'm pretty sure the original comment was ironic (Which is why I liked it), because that's basically what happened to Kathy Griffin (Minus the linguistic pretext of (Using this word with positive connotations even though I have a troubled history with it because it's not just a good thing but the goodest thing) social justice that I picked up on because I was obsessed with the power of language and how even the order in which you say things can subtly bias the way someone thinks about them since I was a child)
If you like to use words like 'schadenfreude' or 'zeitgeist', maybe try 'fremdschämen' which means, feeling ashamed for the embarassment of other people. Don't be scared to pronounce the 'ä', it is just like the english a. Just say 'fremt-shamin'. You definately get 'disgust goosebumps' from that.
It’s because of the fact that there’s at least one Irish person behind every single movement. It’s just that the ones behind peace movements are the most pissed off ones.
Green Day is the most prolific 2000s anti establishment band, it’s amazing they were allowed on the fm/ stations . They were soooo popular and their lyrics were so so aggressive. Nothing but respect
but that's the thing, they truly aren't. They presented little to no threat to US society and gov, and so they exist to make "the kids" bang their heads and shake their fists... and then vote Democrat as their way of protest.
No one, not the bushes, dick Cheney, fox,cnn, halliburton or Raytheon. Non of them profited more from the Iraq war than freaking " hope you had the time of your life green day
Considering all the songs that got banned for being "anti American" I wonder how they got away with their album🤔 Some government guy: No-one's going to take Green Day seriously, they're men who wear eyeliner.
I was a young adult in the 2000's, and I still cherish "American Idiot" as the only album to give any comprehensible voice to what it felt like to be young and angry in that decade.
That Michael Moore Oscars clip showed some interesting shots of the following people: - Adrian Brody eventually won his Oscar that night and kissed Halle Berry. - Martin Scorsese directed a short film called "The Big Shave" in 1967 which has been referred to as "...a metaphor for the self-destructive involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War." - Louis Gossett, Jr. co-wrote the anti-war song "Handsome Johnny" with Richie Havens. - Amy Madigan and Ed Harris sat in protest during Elia Kazan's Lifetime Achievement Oscar because he gave up names to the HUAC. - Calista Flockhart and Harrison Ford did "Ally McBeal Goes To the Kessel Run" - Richard Gere is banned from China for that "Red Corner" movie and for his association with the Dalai Lama. P.S. Lindsay, you are awesome!
Yup, that is an important point, and I've always thought it's weird. Seemed like they vanished right when they should have been at their most relevant - or had audiences the most ready to listen to the message, anyway. Even more recently, when the band's got back together to play new shows, there's still no new material forthcoming. It's odd.
In 4-8 years we're going to see articles from "conservative intelligentsia" justifying Trump's presidency, and another 4 years after that it will trickle down into status quo liberals trying to restore his image as well. It's the same cycle every time. Reagan did not leave office as the Christ figure he became to conservatives (and even many 'moderates') either, that was another case of mythologizing and rehabilitation of his image. The most important thing for these people is that the American system be viewed as inherently just, that it could never facilitate such massive atrocities as the Bush and Trump administrations, and therefore in retrospect those atrocities must only have been slight hiccups that weren't nearly as bad as we all remember them being.
@@Nuvizzle @The purple penguin I used to think like you do, until I see people on twitter start calling out many corporations and celebrities on their double standards and opportunistic cashing on the BLM, such as NFL's firing Kaepernick's kneeling years ago. Then, came people toppled down statues of former slave owners or confederacy flags, dating back to hundreds of years, which was not started by some celebrities: It is just young educated people doing it, all around the world. People do keep scores of injustice. They appear forgetful on the surface to us because they are busy with their lives, but with a little reminder from historians and intellectuals, and at the right moment, the passion and anger for injustice or hypocrisy can be rekindled. So despite all the pandemic, cliamte change and even possibility of 3rd World War, it has reignite my hope for humanity.
Gen Z kids who were alive during the Bush era and 9/11 but don’t remember any of it watching this video: write that down, write that down! In all serious, this is a really well done video and I really appreciate how thorough and informative your videos are!
im surprised nine inch nails was completely left out of this, given that they werent allowed to perform at the MTV awards in 2005 because they wanted an image of george bush to hang while they played "hand that feeds" which was about him....also leaving out Nail's album: Year Zero, Linkin Park's entire album: Minutes to Midnight, no honorable mention of even maroon 5 chiming in with their anti-bush themed song: makes me wonder was also surprised the biggest influential protest band of all time left out when talking about the 90s: Rage Against The Machine 👀
Rage was done releasing singles by, what, 2000? Ellis seems to have picked up after 9/11, not the actual beginning of the Bush presidency. Rage never wrote a War on Terror song. Zach did "March of Death" with DJ Shadow and then did the One Day As A Lion EP with Jon Theodore.
@@grahamkristensen9301 I just learned this now, went to listen the song and still sounded like is about a relationship so I decided to do some Googling. This is what I found that Adam said about the song: “kind of had something to do with [the band’s] growing dissatisfaction with things and the confusion that was in the air - maybe not targeted at the Bush administration, but maybe dancing around that territory a little bit" with the line "give me something to believe in, ‘cause I don’t believe in you anymore". Like, that's nothing. I would never ever had thought any line wasn't about a relationship if I hadn't read this comment section.
Also 10000 Fists album by Disturbed. The thing is there is so much material that could have been picked from but she had to make a narrative because just listing a bunch of music would be a very uninteresting video,
I will have you know that "Incomprehensible Gen X Caterwauling" practically defines my music tastes. It's also really hard to deny the subtitles speak truth.
I certainly pay more attention first to that build up, given I tend to follow Todd more I was like really baffled by that word by word intro from his Trainwreckord Madonna video.... and then just expecting that cameo after that ringtone and still legit surprise.
@@sonicjrjr14 bc That Guy is a fool, bc his company he is the face of has a history of abuse they've never repaired the damage of, bc the association can feel and be shameful despite cutting ties years before. It's just a lot, and it's not deserved here.
Man, the Bush years were surreal. There was just this palpable atmosphere of being pressured to not even question the invasion of Iraq, let alone protest. I remember being in a high school history class around 2006 and asking questions about Iraq and why we were there, and literally the kid in front of me turned around in his chair and asked me deadly serious "Do you support terrorism?" It was a weird and crazy time...
I think that's why I have sort of this mild resistance to the idea that "times are worse than ever." People who say that don't remember or weren't around for the sheer existential angst of realizing everyone around you was determined to be a jingoistic dumbass.
Boingo had a song that hit me right between the eyes called "War Again." It was about the first Gulf War, ap it was a little late in coming. But it encapsulated that period exceptionally well.
I once heard Billie Joe Armstrong say in an interview that When September Ends was inspired by the death of his father. I find it sad to think about how many people in the early 2000’s could relate to a song about losing a loved one.
It's sad but not necessarily troubling, I would have thought a lot of people would be able to relate to that topic in any given time period. Maybe a few more than usual after a war or pandemic, granted.
Yup. It wasn't just music. In the pre-9/11 world, I was starting to blow up as a comic. Bookings exploded to the point I was turning down work, I was talking to people from CBS, HBO, Comedy Central, etc, and fielding calls from agents trying to sign me. And then I made the super-smart post-9/11 decision not to compromise my integrity, refusing to water down my political material, or drop jokes that made fun of Dubya. Yeah. That went well. I had one industry guy ask me (exact quote), "Would it kill you to write some fart jokes?" It sure killed my career not to. It took about 2 years to go from development-deal-trajectory to co-headlining one-nighters with bad ventriloquists. The issue I have with this video is, it wasn't that "we" weren't in the mood for protest art; it was that the entertainment industry dropped the shithammer of the gods on protest art. Audiences thought I was just as funny as before, but industry was terrified of backlash. And artists like The Dixie Chicks paid the price for that fear. It's funny how much the right caterwauls about SJWs silencing people and damaging careers and whatnot, when they're the ones who got the ball rolling in the early 2000s.
Yeah, the media sure as hell was beating the drums for war pretty loudly. They would cruxify anyone live if they spoke anything against the war. Boeing don't put commercials on TV to sell planes to viewers.
punk has always been stereotyped by hollywood and media as "crazy unhinged angry teens destroying everything in their path and being super mean to poor innocent capitalists" when in reality the message behind our music is to literally stop war and hatred lmao
Political Renzi No. Market economies are not the same thing as capitalism. Capitalism is when the means of production are owned by a small group of people (the capitalists) who make their profit by getting other people (the workers) to work on those means of production to create value, and then paying them a small fraction of said value to those workers and keeping the rest of that value for themselves. In the case of Green Day, they are not capitalists. The means of production (in this case being the studio equipment to record their music, the infrastructure to stream that music online, to sell physical media with said music or to get radio airplay of their music, the media infrastructure to create publicity for them and to book concerts, and probably a thousand more things I don’t recall at the moment) isn’t owned by them, but by Warner Records, the owners of their current label, Reprise. They are, in effect, very well paid employees of Warner.
Refusing to support someone's music isn't cancel culture. You also have no idea who called to get there music taken off the air since, as evidenced by the Oscar's booing a very left wing guy with a left wing message, Americans in general (not just right wingers) were pro war.
sean unknown Except conservatives didn’t just “refuse to support their music”, they literally did everything like calling into stations in order to get the Dixie chicks off the air. But keep trying to justify your hypocrisy. If you think the audience at the Oscars is “left wing”, then you’re about as dumb as I imagined based on your first claim.
i would actually argue that pink's song is not that empathetic - sure it starts that way, but it quickly starts getting angry and accusatory, ending with very bitter realisation that looking for humanity in bush is pointless. or at least that was always my interpretation. also, loved the video and i'm so excited for your book
Exactly. I think that especially the ending "Dear Mr. President, you'd never take a walk with me" is Pink saying that being empathetic towards and having an actual discussion with Bush would be impossible
I thought the same, I dont think its so much about empathy (for Bush) as it is about despair. the song starts out trying to have a conversation, but the longer it goes on, the more exasperated it gets. "What kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay" I think was the lyric that sent shivers down my spine as the song shifted until she gives up and gets angry with "let me tell you about hard work - rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away". By the end she literally screams "you dont know nothing 'bout hard work" at the president. And that quiet tone towards the end feels so defeated that it is heartbreaking.
I have the privilige to compare it to Boudewijn de Groot's (Dutch Bob Dylan) Meneer de President, Weltrusten. It's a Dutch Vietnam protest song, aimed at the American president. It's passive aggressive as fuck and the attitude can trensend languages. Believe me, Pink's song is sweet after you hear (and understand) that Dutch song. Edit: The song from 1966 is a lullaby to President LBJ about the innocent lives he's taking in the War for no real reason. And that these souls will haunt for his sins in his dreams.
Watching this after Trump has been elected again to the Presidency hits different. 2024 election was 2004 redux, Summer 2020 increasingly looks like an outlier in terms of progress
This feels a little incomplete without mentioning "America! Fuck Yeah!" it's incredibly memorable and ridicules the attitudes of the Bush era. if you asked people what the theme song for the Iraq war was they'd probably pick that one.
"America! Fuck Yeah!" kind of suffers from the paradox of satire. It is over the top jingoistic but if you ask people what It's about, many will tell you that they treat it as pro American anyway because it has that "badass vibe".
@@APoleYouKnow while thats true, it doesnt change the actual meaning on the song the same thing has happened with "American Woman" the guy was singing about how Britain was/is trying to get tf away from American bs, and yet people treated/treat it like its a goddamn pro america song
@@tavrosnitram1529 I thought it was a song about an actual American woman who was stalking the lead singer. And as an American, I hear enough about how bad America is from other Americans, I don't need foreigners piling on either
same here btw. like i'm familiar with some of the things she talks about, but i'm pretty much just along for the ride on this one hahaha. have you seen the 9/11 videos of hers?
Ahahah ! As a french, we used to be pretty bitter by getting trolled by Bush administration so I remember a lot. Even to this day, feels good not having been a part of this shit show.
@@javierfromvenezuela yes, I did watch them, and found them pretty interesting, especially since I was too young to actually remember 9/11 happening, and it did provide a glimpse into the American point of view on terrorism/etc
"The music of rebellion makes you wanna rage, But it's made by millionaires who are nearly twice your age" - *Porcupine Tree - "The Sound of Muzak" (2002), lyrics by Steven Wilson*
Okay, I actually really like "What's going on" specifically because it encapsulates a sort of ignorant sense of unease, a vague desire for freedom from a force of oppression most people have absolutely no grasp on, alienation without understanding of that alienation. It resonates with people *because* it's about nothing specific. It's simply about the relatable feeling of everything being wrong.
I agree with you. Music is about making people FEEL something, not writing a damn documentary of the era. Linda Perry can sing her ass off too. I think a LOT of people today feel that vague sense of disenfranchisement despite being one of the most spoiled generations EVER... so it's funny they would be critical of a song that basically speaks to their exact mindset.
Agreed. The Linda Perry stray detracted from the video. I just don’t see what the purpose of it was aside from the fact she doesn’t like that song and wanted an opportunity to poke fun at it hahah. But it’s such a great song haha.
My jaw dropped at that moment. Lol Like I knew the band split because of ideological differences. But I had assumed that meant they all went left to varying degrees. Like wow lol
My mind was blown, I had no idea there was a Trump supporter in their midst! Their "indefinite hiatus" makes a lot more sense now. I was a little bummed that Lindsey didn't mention Toxicity. BYOB is fine but also like Deer Dance would like to have a word with you from the year of our Lord 2001.
As someone born in 2001 and raised on Green Day, I had the exact opposite (but somehow equivalent) experience hearing songs like "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" for the first time. The sort of wakeup call to the other side of the story/issue/country is never a comfy one, and I feel you big time.
Nathan Carter same but as a '96 kid... it was always so weird going to friends houses and seeing their families anti-Bush magnets/signs/magazines/etc. when I was being told by my parents that he was such a great man and doing so much for the country 🙄 I mean even now they say the same shit, but about the Cheeto man, so not much has changed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
After watching this again in November 2024 this video has become even more relevant than at release. With Trump headed back to the white house for another 4 years it feels like how it must have felt in 2004 (I was too young at the time to remember it). Here we are protesting a war and the reelection of a deeply dangerous president at a time when many people on the left have lost faith. There are obviously many differences between today and the Bush years but it will be interesting to see if the parallels continue
“During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”
@The Last Danite how did you come to the conclusion that this was disrespectful towards the people of Vietnam? It's commenting on the lack of perceived power that artists held in the 60s and 70s.
What Kurt was wrong about (and I am a huge fan of his) is that their art lives on and inspires countless others while the war is long over. He is right that it didn't stop the war as they had wanted, but in some ways it did so much more. It shaped culture. So it goes. Poo tee weet.
@@DjurslandsEfterskole Dirty Harry (especially the rap section) was an explicitly anti-Iraq War song. But really the entire album is anti-war (though its larger message is more focused on being anti-corporate greed.) It's such a great album.
@@AttentiveDragon Fire Coming out of the Monkey's Head is probably the most on the nose about it in the album, the ending lyrics basically state what the whole story was about
It would’ve been great to talk about Gorillaz’ Demon Days. It was an entire allegory of the Iraq war that was both commercially and critically acclaimed AND by a virtual band whose whole premise was parodying the 2000’s talent show era of music
And while it’s outside the scope of the topic of the video, Humanz was... something? Like a prescient not-exactly-protest album. The concept Albarn wanted the collaborators for the album to work with was basically “trump just got elected, the world is ending, we’re throwing a last hurrah bash”. The recording for the album happened well in advance of the election when very few people thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell, so it was supposed to be a “hypothetical dark fantasy”. It would almost be funny, if things hadn’t turned out so much worse than anybody was expecting.
It's notable that even though I own the album, I never realized it was anti-iraq-war. I don't know if they intentionally flew under the radar, but it never caught flack for it like the Dixie Chicks did.
It was commercially successful because majority of people did not catch on to its anti Iraq war sentiments. Exactly the same case as the "wow, cool robot" meme. Most young people that became fans of Gorillaz became obsessively invested in the lore of the virtual band.
One of the most interesting things about this topic that I was hoping would get brought up was the importance of the "emo" subculture, particularly for youth - and I'm using that term in terms of the general pop culture understanding of it. Yes, I know that "emo" is a misnomer and we could argue about semantics but I'm referring to the trends present in groups like Evanescence, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Fall Out Boy, etc., aka what the mainstream generally terms as "emo." You brushed on it a little with the MCR shoutout, though I DO get why you didn't get into it - it wasn't necessarily outspokenly political stuff as a brand. However, I think it's worth noting that there's a reason that scene got so big: most of its audience consisted of kids who were too young to vote but nonetheless had to bear the consequences of a truly boneheaded administration's shitty decisions. There were a lot of kids who had no memory of any kind of perceived "threat" on this scale and the coverage was EVERYWHERE. There was no avoiding it. So if the country genre consisted of proud, jingoistic pronouncements of how you Can't Let The Terrorists Win, the "emo" subculture that rose in the early-to-mid-2000s consisted of wearing your heart on your sleeve, being unrepentant about your anger and your pain, and so on. A lot of it was definitely more personalized, very focused on stuff like relationships, but the overtones of disillusionment a lot of those acts carried was very much a real thing with kids and teenagers in that era (especially among closeted queer and mentally ill youth, who didn't otherwise have much of a mainstream outlet). A lot of those bands and groups were heavily influenced by Green Day's "American Idiot" - visually, sonically, thematically, and so on. How many of the big albums that "emo" bands released in the early-to-mid-2000s dealt with the subject of death, impending doom, an anger about things they felt they couldn't change, or coming to terms with the fucked up and broken parts of yourself - aka the general feeling that plagued practically everyone in that age bracket. There was no escaping that there was a war happening; it was in the news every day. But "emo" allowed a young generation to mourn the fact that it would shoulder the consequences of a war that literally nobody wanted. Maybe it's because of the memories of what that felt like that I can still find all those songs and bands relevant now, when the personal and the political have become even further intertwined. I know I'm not the only "emo" who went back to these songs after the 2016 election. I went off on this huge tangent, sorry! But I wanted to thank you for saying what I've been saying for years - that Green Day is Good, Actually, and they're still very outspoken against political establishments they don't care for. Any "sellout" that promptly turns around and uses that cash to criticize a powerful administration and punk even harder is the furthest thing from selling out, in my honest opinion.
I also felt myself going back to those bands, mostly MCR, and some goth music as well. I liked something a bit angry or that had a few different emotions involved.
I agree with most of this; I was in middle school and then high school for the Bush years, and (along with just general teenage angst) distinctly remember a lot of political angst for an administration and war that I loathed but couldn't do anything about. So I would say there's a connection too. I remember the first time I heard "American Idiot" on the radio and literally, as a 13 year old, was moved.
This is what I THOUGHT the video was going to be about when I saw Green Day in the thumbnail, before realizing she was talking about Top-40-type music and remembered that emo was kind of a sub/counterculture (I was so proud to be "against the mainstream" I went out of my way to ignore "the pop culture" lol)
The greatest protest song of all time was from Animaniacs: "Oh I hate the government, more than you and me/ They stole my goldfish, and unplugged my tv"
Art is a coping mechanism. It helps us process stuff and cause change. Praising the problem causing us to cope in the first place is like my mother telling me to "stop being so sad" because it's inconvenient to her. It's addressing the symptoms without addressing the reason why it's happening.
@@Quasihamster If you think being woke means discriminating against straight white men and telling people their struggles don't mean anything just because they've inherited certain forms of privilege, you don't understand being woke at all. Try learning about it from the people who believe in something instead of the people who want to tear it down.
I will never not love Greenday. That shit came out when I was 14. I was ultra angsty, angry, confused, depressed and with only some loose flards of anti-autority swirling around in my teenage brain that even with generous interpretation couldn't be confused for anything resembling a political worldview. If at that time American Idiot comes out you'll never be able to look back on it with anything but pure nostalgia, lmao. And their really early albums are also just some really solid fun punk rock.
i will never forget hearing "Have You Forgotten?" as a kid and being horrified at the lyric about him wanting news networks to play the footage of 9/11 every day.
Taylor Swift mentioned the whole Dixie Chicks thing in her documentary and you can definitely see the effect it had on musicians and the group being used as a cautionary tale.
I have more respect for the Dixe/Chicks being Southern women who broke their political stereotype and actually being empathetic and on the left. Even back then.
I wonder how different history would be if they'd leaned into it, hard. Like, there was no getting back the people who hated them, but they may have been able to appeal to other demographics
Really though, what did they expect? Protesting a popular president in his home state to a large group of people in his key voter demographic. What did they really expect to happen when they did that? That would be like Taylor Swift doing a black lives matter show in honor of George Floyd and starting out with saying hey I just want to let everyone know we don't support Obama.
This is so interesting as someone who lived through this era but wasn’t really old enough to fully understand and process everything happening. And like, I remember LOVING the Dixie Chicks and assuming they were more of the same country music but I am SHOOK to find out they were essentially cancelled for anti-war sentiment. This only reinforces my love for them tbh
You're telling me. I wasn't a Dixie Chicks fan, but I was an edgy little kid getting into Green Day around this time. I didn't know exactly what was going on in the world, but listening to American Idiot was one of the first political opinions I was exposed to.
The song not ready to make nice was a response to their former fans and the actions mentioned in the video. Their story is a lot more complicated than what could fit here. They won 5 grammys for their 2006 album (including album of the year) but couldn't sell out shows on tour to promote it.
Tarquini that whole album is great, but that song is amazing - growing up (I was about 12 when it came out) and understanding the context made it even more so
I would like to add some information about Pearl Jam's participation in all of this, since you barely mentioned them. Back in early 00's, the band was in an all-time low: they were recovering from the Roskilde incident. Riot Act was (and still is) a very difficult album to listen to. Hard, low, heavy and very depressive at some points. It reflected the state of the band ad that time. Vedder was very critical of the Bush administration, and wrote Bu$hleaguer about him, using baseball references and other analogies. When playing it in concerts, Eddie used to put a shiny suit and a mask resembling him, smoking cigars and doing dances to make fun of Bush -- including in states where republicans were the majority. You can see him get booed in a lot of these concerts, and Eddie just shrugs them off. They were in a low point and still did what they thought was right.
I was never really into Pearl Jam but that sounds pretty bad ass. I'm going to have to track that album down and then check some live footage from that tour. Thanks for the heads up.
I saw Pearl Jam on the 2003 tour in Atlanta. Eddie brought out like 5 guys in W masks during Porch. It was so funny. Bushleager is ruthless, love that song!
Hail to the Thief's mostly somber resignation to political upheaval is pretty representative of the era (R.E.M's Around the Sun rings a bell). To me "You and Whose Army" before it had the more bonafide "resist" vibes. Even cerebral introverts need a little protest music here and there, if relatively ineffectual.
@@mattnapier3143 those 3 albums from Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief were such great snapshots of the time. Perfectly capturing that pessimistic view of modern culture and society. Not much has changed since then either so those albums hold even more weight now.
Green Day were always political. They came from Gilman Street punk rock, a DIY anti-authoritarian scene. They took Pansy Division, a gay punk band with songs like "Bill and Ted's Homosexual Adventure", on tour with them, after they broke big, because they wanted to challenge the new fans they'd picked up and because they respected the band. Remember when they chanted no trump, no kkk no fascist USA at the grammys or whatever? that chant was based off a song by MDC, aka Millions of Dead Cops, an 80s/90s hardcore band ("No war, no KKK no fascist USA"). Their lineage was political! Oh, btw, come out ye black and tans is miles better than kevin barry if we're talking irish republican protest songs :-)
I feel like we're leaving out the part where Vietnam protest music was young people who didn't want to go to war and Iraq war promotion music was those same people, old now, who wanted (someone else) to go to war.
As a Vietnamese, thank you for acknowledging the millions of casualties suffered by Vietnam after the war. Many Americans wouldn't have for, perhaps, obvious reasons. Also, loved Wake Me Up When September Ends growing up and I still do even now. That song basically defined my adolescence, so I'm glad to see it being appreciated.
REALLY! What Time Code? I spent the past 5 years not watching any news from the USA, avoid all stuff on Trump or Trudeau, I barely no anything about the carona virus, and don't look into anything unless it is on a need to know basis, it is fun, if it effects me personally in my life or it is after the fact on a topic and all the dust has settled. I live in Canada and the other day a friend of mine told me "a part of a City was taken over in the USA" and I just stopped her there and told her I don't care till it is over and pops back up in my life because people get invested in the surplus of bull shit even though it doesn't effect them, if it is positive or negative, if they agree or disagree, or even if it is something they wouldn't care about normally or even if it is something they don't want to know about it but it is too easy to get caught up in bull shit and then end up getting stressed and thinking about it even if you don't want to. I normally don't shy away from controversial shit but it seems a lot of these topics are made to hook you in and I find it is better to look at the whole picture at the end and I find I am happier and my relationships with my friends are better... I did here that celebrities have bin making the most self centered, wacky, out of touch videos that is trying to get them attention and clout even though they are using human trauma like blood diamonds and I really don't want to see that cringy shit because it is the exact thing I am trying to avoid.
@@jfridy I honestly can't get into A Perfect Circle, it just reminds me of the worst Tool songs slowed way down but if you have any other songs that you think would change my mind I am open to the suggestions
Honestly, the underground hip hop scene had some great protest music during this period. Artists like MF DOOM, Immortal Technique, Jedi Mind Tricks, Brother Ali, Atmosphere, etc. were producing incredible tracks in opposition to American Imperialism. The mainstream music industry was, of course, never going to give these artist the time of day, but it's important that today we remember that certain groups were ahead of their time and inspired much of music fueling the BLM protests today. (Sort of in the same way that "The Message" in 1982 inspired several decades of class conscious hip hop)
She didn't even mention gorillaz, like dirty harry was one of the most popular songs on demon days that shit was playing on the radio every time i turned it on
I wish you would have mentioned Rage Against The Machine’s “Testify” which referenced Al Gore being the same as Bush or even Outkast’s “Bombs Over Bagdad” which originally was about The Gulf War but was later mistaken for a Pro-Iraq war song.
“During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.” - Kurt Vonnegut
@@nullakjg767 She's mostly covering the mainstream.
@@nullakjg767 That was pretty much my opinion, as well. What about the 90s bands that experienced a minor renaissance in the 2000s singing about the war on drugs and the rise of militarization among police? What about the skater punk music that started adding protest to their repertoire, inspired by Green Day's success? Ignoring that outliers were brought into the mainstream through protest music during this time is a little disingenuous in my opinion. I like the video. I just wish I'd seen more about the actual protest music that inundated my early university years than just "Green Day had a hit."
@@nullakjg767 What band is that?
@@nullakjg767 whose Lindsay Ellis? Huh you're on her channel
@@nullakjg767 I thought it was very informative and did a great job explaining why 2000s pop music was so apolitical and afraid to criticise Bush, compared to the aesthetic of 60s and 70s pop, and that very few anti-war music actually managed to "make it big". I fail to see why a video choosing to tackle that topic is a "garbage video".
And Il Bastardo is right. A band whose most popular song (which isn't even anti-war) is 30 years old and has only 7 million views - isn't relevant at all to the point she's making. When the "war on errorism" album has like, 40 thousand views, and that stupid "boot in your ass" song has 40 MILLION, it's not "garbage" to make your argument that the 2000s music era didn't really have a strong, memorable, anti-war theme, and that Green Day was really the only notable exception.
It's sad that the most thoroughly cancelled artist ever may have been the Dixie Chicks for saying war is bad.
In an age before social media, too. The cultural zeitgeist from 2001 to about 2004/5 was wild.
@@ShortVideosRUs That kinda puts thing into perspective. While the current times aren't great, at least the US public aren't as jingoistic as they were back then, at least in terms of overseas war.
The Dixie Chicks were the only real victims of cancel culture but they were right. "Not Ready to Make Nice" is a great song about them responding to haters.
i remember a radio station just polling people if they should play a dixie chicks song after it happened. listeners said no and they played have you forgotten for the 8th time that week.
it definetly is. If anyone can, check out their new album (first one in 14 years) coming out this july 17th. The title track "Gaslighter" came out a while ago and it is some good stuff.
My Chemical Romance actually started because Gerard Way witnessed 9/11 when he was on a ferry on the way to NYC for his job. He quit his job and got in touch with his old friends to start a band.
I was just about to comment this.
Of course one of the worst terrorist events created one of the worst bands, I shouldn't be surprised.
@@xenos_n. much edgy so burn
@@xenos_n. Nice bait xD
Yep. He also actually grew up around the corner from my Grandma
Hearing that Green Day was our generation's Creedance Clearwater Revival is a take that I never thought I'd agree with.
It's very depressing
i mean its a little frustrating that resistance songs arent in the limelight like in the past. but theres more political music than ever... even during the 2000s era. It was just pushed into more indie scenes. I for one think that if you think Green Day was the most political movements of the time.. and you think the rock against bush bands are "obscure" you're probably just not very versed in music.. not that is a bad thing or I disagree with the premise of this video. imo I don't think you can make generational sweeping assumptions and say anything meaningful.. especially since the dawn of the internet. but it is funny than green day was the most popular anti-war band at the time.
Same, it really does fit well
nobody ever suspects the garage rockers!
Yeah, that shocked me as well. My immediate thought was "that can't be right", then it dawned on me... and I don't think I'll be the same after that realisation 😆
The biggest factor in why youth culture and artists did not react to the “war on terror” like they did to the Vietnam war was the government didn’t institute a draft. To say that the US govt learned nothing from Vietnam is untrue. They learned that as long as they don’t institute a draft they can have their pointless wars go on largely unheeded for 20 years.
This is a good point,I didn't think about it like that
I think the reason was because this wasn't a technically unprovoked attack. This war happened for a reason even if it wasn't a good one
@@midnightgod123 I think that's a big part of it. Vietnam was started by a brief skirmish in the Gulf of Tonkin (though we certainly know now that it was fabricated anyway), which is so far removed from the lives of Americans it never had the personal effect that 9/11 did.
@@Tetragrammaton22 Yeah but Al Qaeda and Bin Laden had nothing to do with Iraq. Sure, Hussein was a horrible dictator, but there was no real proof that he had weapons of mass destruction, or had any intention of attacking us. The Iraqi people had no interest in being “freed” from his rule, and rightly viewed us as the aggressors. So yeah, it was an unprovoked attack, and there was no reason for us to be there.
That's genius. Yes.
Genuinely forgot the nickelback song didn't go "look at this graph".
Meme culture is altering the way we remember the rest of culture...
It sounds so wrong
"Every time I do it laugh."
I genuinely didn't know it came out in 2004. I thought it came out like two years ago or sumting because that's when it became a meme.
😂
"What has he said that made everyone so upset?"
"Be kind to each other."
"Oh yeah. That'll do it."
-Good Omens
Underrated series
@@Copyright_Infringement Underrated Book
Forgot how good that book was
incredible book and series
Oh my gosh, I can't believe a Good Omens reference is here! I'm currently obsessed with both the book and the show!
Lindsay: Maybe Greenday is good actually?
12 year old me: I KNEW IT!!
Current me: I KNEW IT!
Kerplunk and Dookie are amazing albums. Kind of went downhill after that but I've honestly never heard anybody who doesn't like at least some Green Day songs.
Same
culwin if you like any sort of rock or alternative music, hell even pop, you’ll like Green Day
It must've been kinda cringy for older people listening to them but they were in my preteen's heart
A lot of people hate Green Day, but even still you gotta give it to them. In a time when barely anyone was willing to make a protest song or even have a slightly anti-war sentiment in their music, they came out swinging with an entire album. And even more surprising it was a massive hit and one of the most influential rock albums since y2k.
It wasn’t overly preachy, it was relatable and most importantly it was really goddamn good.
swinging with an entire album, influential, and massive hit? Really? Name one friend of yours or anyone you've ever met that has actually listened to that album and not just the 5 singles from it? I will wait lol.
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 mate I grew up with this album, I genuinely can’t think of a friend that didn’t own this album on cd. It’s good the entire way through, I don’t know why you’re being a dick
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 5 rememberable singles from an album and you’re bitching about gatekeeping lmao. god forbid they missed St. Jimmy and the songs that focus on the story more
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 Just like with any incredibly succesfull album; most people are only gonna know the 5 singles that went on to become hits. Because most people, even if they realize that an artist or an album is good, don't get into the depths of an artis unless they feel a certain connection. To argue that you're not succesfull just because this is the case, is a bit shortsighted. The fact that an album had 5 succesfull hits is telling, no doubt. Most albums get 2, 3 at best. Only the massive ones have about 40% of the tracks become mainstream. Your argument, in my opinion at least, is invalid.
Get roasted
Ok but the fact that Lindsey and Todd are still friends and still collaborating makes me really happy
It was a lowkey ship for me.
Wait what happened?
Same with Lindsay and Jenny, I am always happy when I see them hanging out.
Are we sure she hasn't just kidnapped Todd and is holding him as her... "pleasure slave"?
Team Tindsey is vindicated!
The celebs singing Imagine makes me want to walk into ocean
i had avoided seeing that video for so long and now im fuckin haunted
@@huxley3043 I'm still avoiding it. Very cringe.
That video hits such a raw nerve in me that I couldn't avoid giving the screen the finger when it came on. All the while realizing how pointless the gesture was. It's a visceral reaction.
if you need an antithesis, zack fox, eric andre, thundercat and a bunch of celebrities sang slob on me knob in the same format as those other celebs singing imagine
ua-cam.com/video/gctM_22qM1Y/v-deo.html
@André Antunes Bush wasn't the beginning lmao
Green Day has always been political, anti-government, and anti-authority. Even the "middling" album before American Idiot you mentioned has some of their most political songs on it. They just weren't as angry and as much of a statement as American Idiot was for its time.
They come-off more as mildly progressive liberals, than as 'anti-government' and 'anti-authority' in a more anarchist/libertarian-socialist sense. Don't know them that well though.
Yup, people seem to totally forget about minority, which was their politically charged single
As someone who discovered punk through Green Day, it's something a lot of people seem to forget. Punk us a genre heavy on politics and vastly left-wing too, which is probably why it isn't that popular of a genre.
One thing I'll never forget about Green Day, is when they started getting mainstream success, they insisted their now-former label mates, Pansy Division (a band with 3 of the 4 members being openly gay, and their music is unapologetically queer) open for them on tour. In the mid 90s. They risked their mainstream success for their marginalised friends. People can say what they will about Green Day's punk cred, but that was undeniably punk of them. You can even find clips of Green Day singing a bit of one of their songs (Groovy Underwear).
I'm not some huge Green Day stan (i am *that guy* that is into "real" "underground" "punk"), but they did legitimately grow up in the punk subculture and they got their start playing tiny punk venues. They were not a manufactured product in the same way a lot of pop stars or "alternative" bands were at the time. What Lindsay Ellis describes as their big "sellout" moment (Time of Your Life) was like the 5th or 6th time they'd been through the "sellout" ringer. They were called sellouts when they played sappy pop-punk on their debut EP on Lookout. They were called sellouts when they left Lookout Records for a major label. They were called sellouts when they got massive airplay with the Longview video, and so on. The reason American Idiot made perfect sense to them was twofold -- one, i think they were kind of inured to criticism in general after so many of their peers and mentors turned on them, and two, I think they probably wanted to prove to those same people that they could still do something cool and anti-establishment.
honestly, i respected the attempt, although i thought the record was kind of cheesy and under-researched and vague (i prefer political music that is specific and detailed, like Propagandhi or MDC for example). But i like that they went for it. Lord knows nobody else as big as them was bothering.
You know, conservatives act like liberals/lefties are the ones who get hyper-triggered, but now that I'm thinking about it BOTH Republican administrations of my lifetime had Eminem investigated for his lyrics.
@OnThisSideoftheSky Those are people, not politicians. Obama never had Ted Nugent investigated.
Also liberals being triggered over Trump is normal. I'm so done listening to conservatives talk about the liberal reactions to 2016 like that was the highlight of yall's lives. I've seen grown men scream like that over a football game. Trump's presidency represents real problems. When conservatives get triggered its because some high school in Alabama stopped praying before assemblies. Its not at all comparable.
@OnThisSideoftheSky Oh just stick your head in a clogged toilet please. "tHe PrOgReSsIvEs WaNt tO dO a CoMmUnIsM hUuUuUrRrRrRgH"
@OnThisSideoftheSky if we're gonna compare death counts,let's start by asking where you got your "factual number". Nevermind the fact that capitalism in the same amount of time has debatable killed far more people, or did we think all those right wing coups were bloodless affairs? In the same span of time, how many genocidal dictators has the CIA alone supported?
Nevermind that you've just conflated socialism and communism. They're not the same thing, and they're not what the liberal spectrum wants.
Bud, I ain't in support of communism, but if you want to be taken seriously, the "death count" arguement isn't the way to go. It's a vague 'fact' that I've yet to see a source to, and positing that only leads to the inevitable counter arguement that capitalism when taken just as vaguely responsible, may have killed more people.
@OnThisSideoftheSky
Probably the same amount of dead in the us. They sent a lot of people to prison for that red scare.
can we talk about the Red Scare and the Lavender Scare? Grown ass men and women losing their shit over imaginary enemies that people in power made up to keep them complacent and dumb.
oh wait...
"People finally get that 'No, not everyone will live through this, actually. And there is no guarantee that this is for now.'"
Huge statement. I love this. Shivers!!
"This might actually be forever, fuck, it *will* be forever if we don't start doing something. WE THOUGHT THINGS WOULD GET BETTER BY THEMSELVES AND THIS IS WHAT HAPPENED."
Yhea, that got me too!
+
honestly wish that collective conclusion was reached back when it was innocent foreign lives at stake, but it is
Literally made me cry
Avatar Roku, looking fondly upon Lindsey and Todd, "Some friendships are so strong, they can even transcend youtube channels."
Did they hate each other
Roku needs some love and attention considering how everybody is quoting Kyoshi a lot. But Roku didn't make the Da-Li! How about that!
@@harp-692 No, but the breakup of That Channel That Shall Not Be Named was pretty messy so it wouldn't be surprising if they had not really kept in touch or collaborated anymore.
I mean, they used to live in the same apartment, *while she was leaving CA* so I would think their friendship would withstand the CA cluster.
@@ShortVideosRUs dude please I have no idea what you're talking about, what channel?
It's my understanding that "Wake Me Up when September Ends" was originally intended to be about a personal loss in the life of Billy Joe Armstrong, when his father died from esophageal cancer in September of 1982. While it's also about loss more generally, and while the video does go for a slightly more political angle, that's probably the reason why it's not quite the same as "Holiday" or "American Idiot".
It's not really a protest song, just an emotional song on what is otherwise more of a protest album, kind of tied into the rest because there's an overarching story being told. The fact that the month repeatedly mentioned in the chorus is the same month when the US suffered a horrific and politically/culturally important terrorist attack is, at least primarily, just a coincidence.
I guess that explains why its the only song to actually hold up over the years
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 you shut your mouth!
@@TheAbandonedAccount7 did u forget the other two big songs? American Idiot? Holiday?
Yeah,it feels a bit rude to group this in with the rest. I doubt she knew or meant to, but Billie still gets messages every November 1st from people telling him to wake up over a song that's about his dad's death. It's using soldiers fighting more as metaphorical imagery for the struggle he or his dad was feeling through grief or before death and wasn't meant to be political at all
@@alicemadness999 "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" is by far the hit from the album I still hear played frequently as a recurrent, whereas I scarcely hear the other three hits from that era. And "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" is by far the most nondescript of the four songs lyrically basically being, "I'm lonely, I'm walking through this world alone, I hope someone finds me eventually but until then I'm lonely and I'm walking through this world alone................did I mention I'm lonely and walking through this world alone?"
"Unintelligible genX caterwauling" might be the most succinct subtitles ever.
I feel weird because it was entirely intelligible to me. I might have listened to a little too much GenX caterwauling as a kid, lol.
Joffrey Bieber Doesn’t need to seem more intelligent, she is intelligent.
I saw that right when I got to that
Only after the "WHYYYYYYYYYY" video subtitles
I mean... if you disregard the evidence of what communism led to; there was no reason whatsoever for Korea or Vietnam. I feel like the argument always ends up something like, “well I guess we should just stand by and let people suffer”
A five year war is a lot faster than 70+ years of sanctions.
Most western people haven’t gone 24 hours without food for a single day in their life; they obviously can’t contextualize the hardship involved in surviving a centralized authoritarian government
People forget that after the Iraq war, history was almost completely rewritten, and suddenly the question was always, "Why do you love Saddam Hussein?? Why do you wish Saddam were still in power?" NOPE. Not buying it. That's NOT how the war was sold to us. It was pitched to the American people for ONE reason. Iraq supposedly had weapons of mass destruction. That's why we were supposed to attack them. That lie ultimately caused the death of a half million people. Those weapons were NEVER found, yet somehow history was largely rewritten and we all just sort of "moved on" for lack of any choice. It was bullshit before the war. It was bullshit during the war. And it was bullshit in the years after as we all just slowly forgot about it. It was a massive fraud perpetrated for reasons I still don't entirely understand.
By 2005, the public had gradually turned against the war. Cindy Sheehan's protests in summer of 2005 outside Bush's ranch in Crawford, TX finally got some public attention and the anti-war movement at last gained the traction it should have had three years earlier. Only, it wasn't because it was a bullshit conflict based on lies. Nope, we only turned against it because it was HARD, and because a few thousand Americans died. The half million dead Iraqis counted for NOTHING to us, nor did the fact we were lied to.
A Cpt. Price quote from Modern Warfare 2 comes to mind (whether the premises of it is true or doesn't really matter)
"This is for the record. History is written by the victor. History is filled with liars. If he lives, and we die, his truth becomes written - and ours is lost. Shepherd will be a hero, 'cause all you need to change the world is one good lie and a river of blood. He's about to complete the greatest trick a liar ever played on history. His truth will be the truth. But only if he lives, and we die."
Granted Gen. Shepherd is not a historical person, but who's to say that there isn't that possibility especially when talking about the Iraq war.
It was for moneh
@@Raiders1917 that happens in every war especially in iraq
The really crazy thing was seeing the american news media just collectively turn on a dime to support the war, completely disregard the problems with the narrative presented by the Bush administration and regurgitate the official propaganda. That really made me think twice about the supposedly free and independent US press.
Not to mention that, even if Saddam had had weapons of mass destruction, shouldn't you have gonne after the country that was ACTUALLY harboring Al-Qaeda instead?
Excellent analysis as usual, but as a journalist I was slightly disappointed Lindsay forgot to mention a huge factor in turning the public against the Vietnam war effort: it was the first war that was extensively documented in real time, not by propagandist state-sponsored films, but by independent journalism, especially photojournalism. It was the first time the reality of war was brought to light, unfiltered, in all its horror and senselessness.
Take a country that's already frayed thin by having hundreds of thousands sent to die in a war nobody really understands, show them a picture of 9-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc running naked through the streets in the wake of a napalm bombing and tell them THAT's what they're all paying and dying and losing loved ones for... yeah, people are gonna lose their shit.
Yeah, the Pentagon learnt from that lesson; with a revised strategy for "embedding" journalists in the 2000s. But one wonders if they shot themselves in the foot with that success; as not even Pentagon has benefited from the dragged out Afghan theatre, draining their traditional capacity for defending against other Great Powers. If the war's failures had been more clearly presented, it might have ended years earlier.
It was not relevant in this particular case I think? It gets the point across and no information is missed.
That wasn't the topic of this essay.
When it comes to the protests and the cultural side, there are two points that I think had a lot more to do with things, at least during Bush's first term.
Vietnam was a political war halfway around the world to fight the spread of communism, while Iraqi Freedom was (theoretically) a response to an attack against Americans on American soil. There was a lot of anger and call for not just a response but righteous vengeance, that appeals to some people. Fighting a war against politics that at least some Americans were for, on the word of a politician is complicated. Revenge is easy and understandable to everyone. They killed us we should go kill them.
The second point, though, was the draft. A lot of the people that were sent to Vietnam never wanted to be in the military, never wanted to go to war, never wanted to die at the word of a politician. With 9/11, people joined the armed forces in droves, eager to go and settle the score.
Anti-war pictures showed up in the National Geographic, for crying out loud. That didn't happen this time.
Watching this video got me into Green Day. I come back and watch it every once in a while, I think it's one of her best.
Ditto
Thats awesome to hear! I feel like a lot of people look back on them as part of the "cringe" music they listened to as kids but, honestly, I think a lot of it, especially American Idiot, the album, holds up really well and what doesnt is at least kind of fun. So, it's great to hear that people are still discovering them even now. Cheers!
"Our friends the British, with us at every stupid turn", Australians "*sigh*, thank god, she didn't spot us too".
Yeah, Australia ran active combat operations in Vietnam whilst the British Government condemned it.
@@Tom-eq7eh Sadly..... To my knowledge, the Vietnam war didn't benefit Australia or really anyone
To be fair, the British were so public with our arse licking that you couldn't miss it.
Spain was also there for some danmned dang reason :D I'm thankful nobody seem to remember
Alex Obery Took the words out of my mouth lmao, can we finally admit the Howard government was an embarrassment yet?
Lindsay:"Our friends the British, with us at every stupid turn"
Me a Brit: That hurt Lindsay that hurt... It's True.... But it hurt
Hey want to go do something stupid?
@@prideguy3233 god yeah I would!!!!
@@MetalisMental Fuck yeah man!
As an Aussie, I'm so glad us tagging along is so often forgotten. To be fair with Iraq, our government were somewhat concerned that it wasn't well thought through, but the USA may have used the ANZUS treaty if we didn't agree upfront.
@@hart-of-gold Makes me think it's too bad she didn't work in Bush's infamous "You forgot about Poland!" retort to someone questioning the absence of some key NATO players from the so-called "Coalition of the Willing".
"Maybe Green Day is good actually?" We been known, Lindsay. Glad to see you cross that finish line
Hell yeah.
Hi Lindsay! Combat Veteran (Iraq) here, I don't know if this helps at all, but no one seems to be asking what WE were listening to in combat. Honestly, it was such a huge array of music genres, spanning from hip-hop to black metal, however, we were super annoyed there wasn't more updated, modern music stating anti-war stances. Total honesty, we almost always listened to 60's music whenever we got ready to go out on mission, especially when flying. And for what it's worth, every single one of us directly hated that Toby Keith nonsense. lol.
no one cares what the mercenaries were listening to. You were the biggest supporters of war
@@fuckcensorship69 There's a thing called nuance, politicians are the problem. Young Men die whilst powerful men make profits
I mostly listened to classical music, happy hardcore, and Scandinavian death metal records made by bands where all the members died horrifically while I was deployed to Iraq, in Afghanistan it was really more of an emo/screamo/scene playlists
@@MW-3002 i agree my friend
@@MW-3002 cant invade a country if no one aids the invaders
Fun fact: Muntadhar al-Zaidi, the journalist who threw his shoes at Dubya ended up running for the Iraqi Council of Representatives in 2018 and won a seat
There’s also a shrine to his shoe in Tikrit. The dude is also very friendly on Twitter, you all should say hi sometime!
@@Kaanfight apparently he's lovely in english and then his tweets in arabic are anti-gay :(
lol oh no! Thanks for that info. I’m just learning Arabic now so unfortunately I can’t read it just yet. A shame, but as they say, don’t meet your heroes.
I wish someone would throw something at our poor excuse for an executive branch
Good for him
1. The conservative sides dislike of the Dixie Chix was so strong that even in 2010ish my middle school choir teacher strongly encouraged a group of girls not to audition for the choir show with a Dixie Chix song.
2. This video reminded me that I wrote a song in 4th grade about that time a guy threw his shoe at Bush. It was a smash hit in the elementary school and I got in trouble.
You can't just tell us about such masterpiece and not post a link to your song, come on...
That's incredible lmao
Julia - That's hilarious. Reminds me of when I wrote (and read to the class) a poem in 7th grade about Clinton getting head in the oval office. Another smash hit!
As a teacher I can assure you that in my school you wouldn't get in trouble for mocking your politicians, it's part of democracy after all
I remember when Trump got elected, we had basicall a sleep over party in our school where the 11th and 12th grade watched the election. (I live in Germany so because of time difference it was from evening to morning for us). When Trump went live with a speech one of our English teachers took of his shoe and threw it at the wall where the speech was being projected on. It was very hilarious to watch Trump getting a shoe in his face, even though sadly he couldn't feel it.
2003: "Being ashamed of our president means being ashamed of our country. Move to France"
2015: "I didn't vote for this Obamanation"
And now those same guys are saying the same thing with Biden being president.
@@karenk6985
Their hypocrisy has no limits. None whatsoever. It gives me a headache to think about.
Except now , the left can say if you don’t like the Vp you’re a sexist /racist. Good move on Biden part .
My response to that was always if I had the money I would move to France.
2016: hurr hurr Trump is yer pres-I-dent! Go cry me a river, libruls!
2020: noOOOO Q says you guys are great big meanie pants and Trump is still president!!!
Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it.
19:45 Just want to point out that, despite the drummer's views, everyone else in System is still doing good stuff. Serj is working in Armenia and has founded a charity with Tom Morrello from Rage Gainst the Machine, Daron is out there presumably doing Scars on Broadway stuff, and Shavo the bassist is currently making political hip hop with North Kingsley
Yeah, Serj has even publicly spoken out about how confused he is about the drummer's views and how irreconcilable he and the rest of the band believe his views to be. The rest of the band have some odd politics and they're less orthodox than most other highly political bands like RAtM, but they're not anywhere near Trump supporters, quite the opposite.
Throwing that in there, while true undercuts the other three members of the band and undercuts the value that SoaD had to music in politics in general, which is a hell of a lot more than just BYOB. It's also a big part of the reason why there's not been any new SoaD music at all.
@@Lankpants Wasn't there like two new songs from their reunion or something, a few years back? Also, what are some of the odd politics of the other band members?
@@KarlSnarks They released 2 politically driven songs not too long ago
@@KarlSnarks they made two new songs to raise awareness and money for Armenia during their conflict with Azerbaijan in 2020.
Why does "conservative = evil" to so many people? So he has different ideas on how to move forward. That doesn't make him "bad" unless you are already addicted to the CNN koolade. Only today do people ACTUALLY believe people are 'evil' because they hold different political views. Its idiotic.
"Maybe Green Day is good actually?"
I was today years old when I found out that was not the consensus (at least until the late 2000s albums)
Cringe culture is dead, so is lambasting things those darn kids liked, except when it isn't.
I actually like Green Day so them being disliked is news to me.
MrsB055 yea me too
the album had mainstream success but was generally considered corny and overly poppy by many fans of their earlier work. there were also a lot of rumors about them not even writing the music, IIRC, whether true or not I obviously can't say, but I can say other people were saying it.
Lindsays whole thing lately seems to be "everything sucks and is cringe and is stupid" so I'm not surprised that is the tone she also took with this video
“Suffering should not be the prerequisite for good and meaningful art” I yelled YES and slapped the table, thank you so much for this
I agree with the sentiment - no "good and meaningful art" is justifaction for any amount of suffering, and the attitude of treating it as a silver lining is shallow at best...
...but I also think it's the nature of "good and meaningful art" that a certain amount of suffering (either on part of the artist or the subject of the art) is required in order to imbue it with meaning in the first place. No one needs to hear the opinion of someone who has nothing to say, and when everything is a-ok, there kind of is nothing to say. (and do I mean "meaning" specifically; art can be all kinds of good without any meaning)
Of course, the reason mainstream music got so dumb in the 2000's is because it profited from providing the illusion that everything was a-ok precisely by having nothing to say. At least sexy got brought back.
Exactly. And it's not like we're at risk of such a shortage of suffering that we need to manufacture more. Stuff like this always reminds me of this passage from Bertrand Russell:
"To a man of sufficient energy, pain may be a valuable stimulus, and I do not deny that if we were all perfectly happy we should not exert ourselves to become happier. But I cannot admit that it is any part of the duty of human beings to provide others with pain on the off-chance that it may prove fruitful. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred pain proves merely crushing. In the hundredth case it is better to trust to the natural shocks that flesh is heir to. So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it."
“Big and dumb” is the best way to describe the 2000s
The irony is how much a central element to the whole grunge era was itself pretty much wiping out the "big and dumb" feel of so much of the 80s. Time really is a flat circle.
2020 BIGGER AND DUMBER
People call the '80s a black whole of culture, but honestly, the 2000s (especially the early 2000s) was so much worse.
also the US
@@88franko More like GIGANTIC AND CRETINOUS
Here we are again
Hearing "look at this PHOTOgraph" instead of "look at this graph" like in the vine is so jarring!
I know! Everytime I do, it makes me laugh
Both always sounded jilted and awkward to me.
Mike Cabral That’s why it became a meme.
I saw the clip before it was put with audio and i sang LOOK AT THIS GRAaAaAaApPhH to myself
@@TheNumnutRandomness My eyes get so red. And what the hell is on Joey's head?
There's a danger of falling into a nostalgia trap when you look at 60's protest music. Its over-represented in the music from the era that we still listen to today because it was generally more meaningful and hard-hitting than the generic pop that was around at the same time, and because the themes correspond to much-studied historical events. The reality is, there was an awful lot of apolitical, escapist music that was around at the time, and was generally more popular. It's not really fair to compare 2000's mainstream commercial pop to Creedence Clearwater Revival- there was an awful lot of mainstream commercial pop around in the late 60's as well, and also a few very successful nationalistic, pro-war songs- e.g.'The Ballad of the Green Berets', which was a US number one record for 5 weeks in 1966. Creedence infamously never had a Billboard number one record.
Likewise, there were actually quite a lot of anti-war songs released in the 2000's if you look away from the mainstream, usually in genres that are known to be angry and political anyway- e.g. punk, reggae and hip hop. My personal favourites are probably 'Worlds Apart' by Texan punks ...And You WIll Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, which is just furious and disgusted, and 'Day After Tomorrow' by Tom Waits, which is just utterly heartbreaking. Neither of them remotely bothered the top 10, but I remember Waits' sing 'Day After Tomorrow' on the Daily Show, which was absolutely huge at the time.
And consider the genre of metal. Just about 80% of metal songs are political in some way, with the majority of those political songs being anti-war.
P.S. My favorite type of political metal music are the ones that are anti-war and pro-soldier, which seems like it makes no sense, but to that I say look no further than Five Finger Death Punch's Wrong Side of Heaven or Avenged Sevenfold's M.I.A.
@@SaladofStones what does that have to do with anything
There were popular pro-war, or least anti-anti-war songs in the Vietnam era, mostly in the country/folk genre I think. I recall something with lyrics along the lines of: "goodbye darling hello Vietnam" and something about okies from some place that rhymes with okie?
21Arrozito Hello Vietnam by Johnnie Wright and Okie from Muskogee by Merle Haggard.
Not to mention the active censorship of songs critical of the Iraq War by broadcast stations during this time period that effectively boxed many of those protest songs from getting radio play. Even still, bands like Radiohead released protest albums like “Hail To The Theif” that charted to #3 in America and #1 in the UK without any broadcast support. I’m honestly disappointed with Lindsay’s thesis here. Lots of glaring omissions of all the hip hop, indie rock, folk, jam bands, punk, and metal bands that sold massive amounts of anti-war records during this time. A discussion of Bush era protest music without any discussion of broadcast censorship is really, really lacking.
*video of the celebrities singing imagine pops up*
Me, aloud: "Oh no don't do this to me"
That moment made me burn wiith second hand embarrassment lol
So much cringe. Only things worse is these white celebrities saying “I’m sorry for racism”
Imagine needs to go into the vault. No one should be allowed to cover it or sing it. There's a few other ones, Don't Stop Believing for sure.
E H God when that happened I was so fucking angry, it still enrages me. Like imagine? Yeah I’d like to imagine a world where you actually do something to help people you lazy, selfish jagoffs.
omg same i almost fast forwarded iT'S SO CRINGY
Radiohead's 2003 album Hail to the Thief wasn't explicitly protest music, but it was definitely about the vibe of living in the unfolding War on Terror.
I mean the album name alone is so blunt it's laughable, I don't know how you can read it as anything other than protest music against the Bush administration.
@@c0nceited822 It is obviously a reference to Bush, but the lyrical content of the album is pretty vague compared to something like American Idiot. Also, I feel like SOAD's Toxicity could've been mentioned in this video. It came out days before 9/11 and contained in-depth criticism of America in general, so it ended up fitting into the anti-war genre.
Yeah not including Hail to the Theif in this video is a pretty glaring omission. 2+2=5 and There, There are pretty explicitly about the Iraq war
HTTT wasnt exactly a protest album just a criticism of the 2003 political landscape
@@thomasmihaljevic3762There, There's not really about Itaq but 2 + 2 = 5 is definitely about the government and the war on terror. Sit Down, Stand Up is also about soldiers going in to fight in Iraq.
I like how you and Todd parodied the weird “territorial about reviews” trope that happened at your... mutual former workplace
Probably the only good thing about that place was the collaborations
Hm? I knew there was a bunch of crappy crap that happened...there. But review disputes skipped my scope.
@@E-Man5805 if I remember, it was like a thing for the creators when collaborating to be like "WoAh other creator, what are you doing here in my realm of expertise? Don't you know IM the only person to cover this subject"
Cannibal Teddy I mean, he was in a lot of them, so he probably did
@@E-Man5805 oh no, the disputes were just weird skits people did before their reviews officially started -they went something like: 'hey, I'M the music guy on this site, YOU'RE the 2000s film person! You're taking my business away!'. there was no actual beefs between reviewers (except... the obvious one).
Content warning: That video of celebrities singing Imagine plays from 33:06 to 33:18.
I hadn't actually seen the clip before and it's somehow more cringeworthy than I had anticipated
Yuck
needs to be pinned tbh 😤😤😤
Every time I see even a short clip of it I can feel my soul leaving my body from contact embarrassment.
I saw this comment literally the minute after.
Imagine being cancelled for vocally disliking the president in 2020
It hasn't happened yet
you get cancelled for liking him
@@abhishetty2637 proof that society has advanced somewhat
Michael Moore got booed back then and Meryl Streep got also backlash for saying something vaguely anti trump a few years ago
I'm pretty sure the original comment was ironic (Which is why I liked it), because that's basically what happened to Kathy Griffin (Minus the linguistic pretext of (Using this word with positive connotations even though I have a troubled history with it because it's not just a good thing but the goodest thing) social justice that I picked up on because I was obsessed with the power of language and how even the order in which you say things can subtly bias the way someone thinks about them since I was a child)
rewatching this in lieu of recent events
Ah yes, my two favorite genres, *Unintelligible Gen X caterwauling* and *Incomprehensible Millennial rage*
The celebrities singing imagine never fails to give me disgust goosebumps.
If you like to use words like 'schadenfreude' or 'zeitgeist', maybe try 'fremdschämen' which means, feeling ashamed for the embarassment of other people.
Don't be scared to pronounce the 'ä', it is just like the english a. Just say 'fremt-shamin'. You definately get 'disgust goosebumps' from that.
@@mischimischi7183 Fremdschämen is basically "second-hand cringe"
@@mischimischi7183I preffer use cringe, or in portuguese "vergonha alheia"
The thing that gets me is that was during like the second week of quarantine lol
The fact there’s always an Irish person in every wave of protest songs puts a smile on my face.
*"In the days of a free Ireland..." intensifies*
It’s because of the fact that there’s at least one Irish person behind every single movement. It’s just that the ones behind peace movements are the most pissed off ones.
Green Day is the most prolific 2000s anti establishment band, it’s amazing they were allowed on the fm/ stations . They were soooo popular and their lyrics were so so aggressive. Nothing but respect
but that's the thing, they truly aren't. They presented little to no threat to US society and gov, and so they exist to make "the kids" bang their heads and shake their fists... and then vote Democrat as their way of protest.
No one, not the bushes, dick Cheney, fox,cnn, halliburton or Raytheon. Non of them profited more from the Iraq war than freaking " hope you had the time of your life green day
Considering all the songs that got banned for being "anti American" I wonder how they got away with their album🤔
Some government guy: No-one's going to take Green Day seriously, they're men who wear eyeliner.
I was a young adult in the 2000's, and I still cherish "American Idiot" as the only album to give any comprehensible voice to what it felt like to be young and angry in that decade.
they are part of the pro-system woke mob. This is why mainstream radio plays them.
That Michael Moore Oscars clip showed some interesting shots of the following people:
- Adrian Brody eventually won his Oscar that night and kissed Halle Berry.
- Martin Scorsese directed a short film called "The Big Shave" in 1967 which has been referred to as "...a metaphor for the self-destructive involvement of the United States in the Vietnam War."
- Louis Gossett, Jr. co-wrote the anti-war song "Handsome Johnny" with Richie Havens.
- Amy Madigan and Ed Harris sat in protest during Elia Kazan's Lifetime Achievement Oscar because he gave up names to the HUAC.
- Calista Flockhart and Harrison Ford did "Ally McBeal Goes To the Kessel Run"
- Richard Gere is banned from China for that "Red Corner" movie and for his association with the Dalai Lama.
P.S. Lindsay, you are awesome!
@Knock Out Good catch. Beat me to it.
It looked like Scorsese was gonna clap? i hope he was
Fun lil fact: Gerard Way actually was motivated to start My Chemical Romance by 9/11
Can his chemical romance melt steel beams?
That explains so much
That is correct
give us a fun big fact now
I was about to say this. Thank you
I think there's another key thing to mention in this context: Rage Against the Machine broke up in 2000, just before the election.
They raged too hard, and burned themselves out before they were needed.
Yup, that is an important point, and I've always thought it's weird. Seemed like they vanished right when they should have been at their most relevant - or had audiences the most ready to listen to the message, anyway.
Even more recently, when the band's got back together to play new shows, there's still no new material forthcoming. It's odd.
But when the world needed them most... they vanished.
@@MissPoplarLeaf I blame the fire nation
Well, they were doing a lot of ‘both sides’ talking, which turned out to be tragically untrue. Does Gore invade Iraq, ever?
feels like were due for a repeat of bush 2004 right now... youre free to mock me if she pulls through but ive already accepted this fate.
for the record this was before any swing states were called
It's weird how the popular consciousness has just forgotten how terrible Bush was. We have a very short cultural memory.
And how many people praise him for his statements that are against trump's policies like, thanks for having some common sense?
In 4-8 years we're going to see articles from "conservative intelligentsia" justifying Trump's presidency, and another 4 years after that it will trickle down into status quo liberals trying to restore his image as well. It's the same cycle every time. Reagan did not leave office as the Christ figure he became to conservatives (and even many 'moderates') either, that was another case of mythologizing and rehabilitation of his image. The most important thing for these people is that the American system be viewed as inherently just, that it could never facilitate such massive atrocities as the Bush and Trump administrations, and therefore in retrospect those atrocities must only have been slight hiccups that weren't nearly as bad as we all remember them being.
The United States seem to suffer from short term memory.
I was so pissed at that too. Bush deserves to be hung.
@@Nuvizzle @The purple penguin I used to think like you do, until I see people on twitter start calling out many corporations and celebrities on their double standards and opportunistic cashing on the BLM, such as NFL's firing Kaepernick's kneeling years ago.
Then, came people toppled down statues of former slave owners or confederacy flags, dating back to hundreds of years, which was not started by some celebrities: It is just young educated people doing it, all around the world.
People do keep scores of injustice. They appear forgetful on the surface to us because they are busy with their lives, but with a little reminder from historians and intellectuals, and at the right moment, the passion and anger for injustice or hypocrisy can be rekindled.
So despite all the pandemic, cliamte change and even possibility of 3rd World War, it has reignite my hope for humanity.
Gen Z kids who were alive during the Bush era and 9/11 but don’t remember any of it watching this video: write that down, write that down!
In all serious, this is a really well done video and I really appreciate how thorough and informative your videos are!
Tru tho
im surprised nine inch nails was completely left out of this, given that they werent allowed to perform at the MTV awards in 2005 because they wanted an image of george bush to hang while they played "hand that feeds" which was about him....also leaving out Nail's album: Year Zero, Linkin Park's entire album: Minutes to Midnight, no honorable mention of even maroon 5 chiming in with their anti-bush themed song: makes me wonder
was also surprised the biggest influential protest band of all time left out when talking about the 90s: Rage Against The Machine 👀
Minutes to Midnight only had one political song, and how many people would even guess that Makes Me Wonder is an anti-Bush song?
also a Perfect Circle made a whole anti-bush album. It´s called "e-motive"
Rage was done releasing singles by, what, 2000? Ellis seems to have picked up after 9/11, not the actual beginning of the Bush presidency. Rage never wrote a War on Terror song. Zach did "March of Death" with DJ Shadow and then did the One Day As A Lion EP with Jon Theodore.
@@grahamkristensen9301 I just learned this now, went to listen the song and still sounded like is about a relationship so I decided to do some Googling. This is what I found that Adam said about the song: “kind of had something to do with [the band’s] growing dissatisfaction with things and the confusion that was in the air - maybe not targeted at the Bush administration, but maybe dancing around that territory a little bit" with the line "give me something to believe in, ‘cause I don’t believe in you anymore". Like, that's nothing. I would never ever had thought any line wasn't about a relationship if I hadn't read this comment section.
Also 10000 Fists album by Disturbed. The thing is there is so much material that could have been picked from but she had to make a narrative because just listing a bunch of music would be a very uninteresting video,
I can’t stop thinking about 12:28
“The US of AyyyeeeeeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeEeee”
I will have you know that "Incomprehensible Gen X Caterwauling" practically defines my music tastes. It's also really hard to deny the subtitles speak truth.
Given my love of the Millennial Whoop I cannot criticize.
Growing up never knowing what your fav artist were screaming about but blasting it anyways. This defines me.
For people who know their history and the "That Guy With the Glasses" Era, this intro is simply gold.
Shh we don't invoke his person around these parts.
The "Before the Before Times". We don't talk about it anymore.
I certainly pay more attention first to that build up, given I tend to follow Todd more I was like really baffled by that word by word intro from his Trainwreckord Madonna video.... and then just expecting that cameo after that ringtone and still legit surprise.
@@fianjames6622
Why?
@@sonicjrjr14 bc That Guy is a fool, bc his company he is the face of has a history of abuse they've never repaired the damage of, bc the association can feel and be shameful despite cutting ties years before. It's just a lot, and it's not deserved here.
Man, the Bush years were surreal. There was just this palpable atmosphere of being pressured to not even question the invasion of Iraq, let alone protest.
I remember being in a high school history class around 2006 and asking questions about Iraq and why we were there, and literally the kid in front of me turned around in his chair and asked me deadly serious "Do you support terrorism?" It was a weird and crazy time...
It’s still a weird and crazy time
I think that's why I have sort of this mild resistance to the idea that "times are worse than ever." People who say that don't remember or weren't around for the sheer existential angst of realizing everyone around you was determined to be a jingoistic dumbass.
Boingo had a song that hit me right between the eyes called "War Again." It was about the first Gulf War, ap it was a little late in coming. But it encapsulated that period exceptionally well.
It was like the entire country was hypnotized.
it never stopped being weird and crazy.
Watching it in 2024 is extremely depressing, with 2025 approaching in less than a month.
I once heard Billie Joe Armstrong say in an interview that When September Ends was inspired by the death of his father. I find it sad to think about how many people in the early 2000’s could relate to a song about losing a loved one.
Thank you for pointing this out. So many think it's just political.
welp, welcome to 2020...
It's sad but not necessarily troubling, I would have thought a lot of people would be able to relate to that topic in any given time period. Maybe a few more than usual after a war or pandemic, granted.
Most people think that song is about 9/11 LOL.
That is true. He literally said to his mother during an argument after he dad had died in September "Wake me up when September ends"
"I'm losing to a bird!"
"Hal, it's about cats."
"We'll put a boot in your ass."
At last, the trifecta is complete
I suppose "the USA us a terrorist organization" might be too on the nose
This is "see how I glitter" erasure
Angie S ^^^
What, no "I ate the whole plate"?
Macavity!
Yup. It wasn't just music. In the pre-9/11 world, I was starting to blow up as a comic. Bookings exploded to the point I was turning down work, I was talking to people from CBS, HBO, Comedy Central, etc, and fielding calls from agents trying to sign me. And then I made the super-smart post-9/11 decision not to compromise my integrity, refusing to water down my political material, or drop jokes that made fun of Dubya. Yeah. That went well. I had one industry guy ask me (exact quote), "Would it kill you to write some fart jokes?" It sure killed my career not to. It took about 2 years to go from development-deal-trajectory to co-headlining one-nighters with bad ventriloquists.
The issue I have with this video is, it wasn't that "we" weren't in the mood for protest art; it was that the entertainment industry dropped the shithammer of the gods on protest art. Audiences thought I was just as funny as before, but industry was terrified of backlash. And artists like The Dixie Chicks paid the price for that fear. It's funny how much the right caterwauls about SJWs silencing people and damaging careers and whatnot, when they're the ones who got the ball rolling in the early 2000s.
Yeah, the media sure as hell was beating the drums for war pretty loudly. They would cruxify anyone live if they spoke anything against the war. Boeing don't put commercials on TV to sell planes to viewers.
The right has not a shred of self awarenes
tfw you called out the right for doing it then and you're calling out the left for doing it now but you're still going to be labeled as the enemy.
Well here we go again see you on the other side
punk has always been stereotyped by hollywood and media as "crazy unhinged angry teens destroying everything in their path and being super mean to poor innocent capitalists" when in reality the message behind our music is to literally stop war and hatred lmao
@Punk Shark True, but one usually comes from another
Political Renzi ....no...
xxxaragon No.
Political Renzi No. Market economies are not the same thing as capitalism. Capitalism is when the means of production are owned by a small group of people (the capitalists) who make their profit by getting other people (the workers) to work on those means of production to create value, and then paying them a small fraction of said value to those workers and keeping the rest of that value for themselves.
In the case of Green Day, they are not capitalists. The means of production (in this case being the studio equipment to record their music, the infrastructure to stream that music online, to sell physical media with said music or to get radio airplay of their music, the media infrastructure to create publicity for them and to book concerts, and probably a thousand more things I don’t recall at the moment) isn’t owned by them, but by Warner Records, the owners of their current label, Reprise. They are, in effect, very well paid employees of Warner.
Naiki Gutierrez Thank you, you it explained it way better than I could
It's really funny that conservatives are all against so-called "cancel culture," when they cancelled the Dixie Chicks without a second thought
Conservatives project so damn much they put IMAX to shame
They loved guns until the Black Panthers started arming themselves to protect their communities from racists.
Just reactionaries being reactionaries.
@@riley8385 they still love guns what are you going on about?
Refusing to support someone's music isn't cancel culture.
You also have no idea who called to get there music taken off the air since, as evidenced by the Oscar's booing a very left wing guy with a left wing message, Americans in general (not just right wingers) were pro war.
sean unknown Except conservatives didn’t just “refuse to support their music”, they literally did everything like calling into stations in order to get the Dixie chicks off the air. But keep trying to justify your hypocrisy.
If you think the audience at the Oscars is “left wing”, then you’re about as dumb as I imagined based on your first claim.
i would actually argue that pink's song is not that empathetic - sure it starts that way, but it quickly starts getting angry and accusatory, ending with very bitter realisation that looking for humanity in bush is pointless. or at least that was always my interpretation.
also, loved the video and i'm so excited for your book
++ I concur.
Would you agree that it's pointless?
Exactly. I think that especially the ending "Dear Mr. President, you'd never take a walk with me" is Pink saying that being empathetic towards and having an actual discussion with Bush would be impossible
I thought the same, I dont think its so much about empathy (for Bush) as it is about despair. the song starts out trying to have a conversation, but the longer it goes on, the more exasperated it gets. "What kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay" I think was the lyric that sent shivers down my spine as the song shifted until she gives up and gets angry with "let me tell you about hard work - rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away". By the end she literally screams "you dont know nothing 'bout hard work" at the president.
And that quiet tone towards the end feels so defeated that it is heartbreaking.
I have the privilige to compare it to Boudewijn de Groot's (Dutch Bob Dylan) Meneer de President, Weltrusten.
It's a Dutch Vietnam protest song, aimed at the American president.
It's passive aggressive as fuck and the attitude can trensend languages.
Believe me, Pink's song is sweet after you hear (and understand) that Dutch song.
Edit: The song from 1966 is a lullaby to President LBJ about the innocent lives he's taking in the War for no real reason. And that these souls will haunt for his sins in his dreams.
Watching this after Trump has been elected again to the Presidency hits different. 2024 election was 2004 redux, Summer 2020 increasingly looks like an outlier in terms of progress
This feels a little incomplete without mentioning "America! Fuck Yeah!" it's incredibly memorable and ridicules the attitudes of the Bush era. if you asked people what the theme song for the Iraq war was they'd probably pick that one.
"America! Fuck Yeah!" kind of suffers from the paradox of satire. It is over the top jingoistic but if you ask people what It's about, many will tell you that they treat it as pro American anyway because it has that "badass vibe".
@@APoleYouKnow while thats true, it doesnt change the actual meaning on the song
the same thing has happened with "American Woman" the guy was singing about how Britain was/is trying to get tf away from American bs, and yet people treated/treat it like its a goddamn pro america song
Same thing happened with Born in the USA
@@tavrosnitram1529 Canada.
@@tavrosnitram1529 I thought it was a song about an actual American woman who was stalking the lead singer. And as an American, I hear enough about how bad America is from other Americans, I don't need foreigners piling on either
As a non American that doesn’t really remember when this all happened, this was really interesting to watch
same here btw. like i'm familiar with some of the things she talks about, but i'm pretty much just along for the ride on this one hahaha. have you seen the 9/11 videos of hers?
yeah it was a really weird time and place to grow up
@italkcrab eh I'd be careful with that. It sounds a bit like nostalgia is filtering for you. It probably wasn't all those things haha. Sorry to say.
Ahahah ! As a french, we used to be pretty bitter by getting trolled by Bush administration so I remember a lot. Even to this day, feels good not having been a part of this shit show.
@@javierfromvenezuela yes, I did watch them, and found them pretty interesting, especially since I was too young to actually remember 9/11 happening, and it did provide a glimpse into the American point of view on terrorism/etc
"The music of rebellion makes you wanna rage,
But it's made by millionaires who are nearly twice your age"
- *Porcupine Tree - "The Sound of Muzak" (2002), lyrics by Steven Wilson*
kind of became a moot point after Porcupine Tree released boomer masterpiece Fear of A Blank Planet
Steven Wilson subtly dissing Tom Morello and Zack De La Rocha right there
@@credenzamostro I imagine by "boomer" you mean "anything you don't like"
Okay, I actually really like "What's going on" specifically because it encapsulates a sort of ignorant sense of unease, a vague desire for freedom from a force of oppression most people have absolutely no grasp on, alienation without understanding of that alienation. It resonates with people *because* it's about nothing specific. It's simply about the relatable feeling of everything being wrong.
And her making fun of Linda Perry?
Blasphemy!
I agree with you. Music is about making people FEEL something, not writing a damn documentary of the era. Linda Perry can sing her ass off too.
I think a LOT of people today feel that vague sense of disenfranchisement despite being one of the most spoiled generations EVER... so it's funny they would be critical of a song that basically speaks to their exact mindset.
Agreed. The Linda Perry stray detracted from the video. I just don’t see what the purpose of it was aside from the fact she doesn’t like that song and wanted an opportunity to poke fun at it hahah. But it’s such a great song haha.
Please don't use those clips of celebrities singing imagine. Ever again.
Do however check out LINGUA IGNOTA's great dark wave mash up of those narcissists
Imagine if she diiiiid
I had gone my whole life without seeing it and this video forever changed that sadly
hey guys we're in quarantine just like you, IN OUR BILLION DOLLAR GIANT MANSIONS, but we're just like you plebs
I fast forwarded that part!
The System of a Down defender has logged on to note that their drummer is 100% the odd man out
It feels crazy out of character for a system member. :/
*the Nirvana fan looking at Krist Novoselic*
My jaw dropped at that moment. Lol
Like I knew the band split because of ideological differences. But I had assumed that meant they all went left to varying degrees. Like wow lol
God, how could they even play together..
My mind was blown, I had no idea there was a Trump supporter in their midst! Their "indefinite hiatus" makes a lot more sense now.
I was a little bummed that Lindsey didn't mention Toxicity. BYOB is fine but also like Deer Dance would like to have a word with you from the year of our Lord 2001.
*me, a home-schooled Gen Z man raised in a conservative household where Bush was NEVER criticized watching this video* Oh shit.
:_( Please note that my digital sad face is not intended to patronize you. It is intended to show my empathy towards your situation.
Same!!! This has been eye opening
As someone born in 2001 and raised on Green Day, I had the exact opposite (but somehow equivalent) experience hearing songs like "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" for the first time. The sort of wakeup call to the other side of the story/issue/country is never a comfy one, and I feel you big time.
Nathan Carter same but as a '96 kid...
it was always so weird going to friends houses and seeing their families anti-Bush magnets/signs/magazines/etc. when I was being told by my parents that he was such a great man and doing so much for the country 🙄 I mean even now they say the same shit, but about the Cheeto man, so not much has changed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
welcome, make yourself comfortable
After watching this again in November 2024 this video has become even more relevant than at release. With Trump headed back to the white house for another 4 years it feels like how it must have felt in 2004 (I was too young at the time to remember it). Here we are protesting a war and the reelection of a deeply dangerous president at a time when many people on the left have lost faith. There are obviously many differences between today and the Bush years but it will be interesting to see if the parallels continue
“During the Vietnam War, every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.”
Wow. Where is this quote from?
@@j2geek Kurt Vonnegut
@The Last Danite how did you come to the conclusion that this was disrespectful towards the people of Vietnam? It's commenting on the lack of perceived power that artists held in the 60s and 70s.
@@LayneBenofsky Thank you.
What Kurt was wrong about (and I am a huge fan of his) is that their art lives on and inspires countless others while the war is long over.
He is right that it didn't stop the war as they had wanted, but in some ways it did so much more. It shaped culture.
So it goes. Poo tee weet.
Gorillaz' Demon Days had a few songs that dealt with war directly and indirectly
Which can you recommend?
@@DjurslandsEfterskole Dirty Harry (especially the rap section) was an explicitly anti-Iraq War song. But really the entire album is anti-war (though its larger message is more focused on being anti-corporate greed.) It's such a great album.
@@AttentiveDragon Thank you! Got into Gorillaz before I was old enough to go into the deeper meaning, so I'll have a dive back in
@@AttentiveDragon Fire Coming out of the Monkey's Head is probably the most on the nose about it in the album, the ending lyrics basically state what the whole story was about
Paraticristi feel good inc is pretty anti capitalist.
It would’ve been great to talk about Gorillaz’ Demon Days. It was an entire allegory of the Iraq war that was both commercially and critically acclaimed AND by a virtual band whose whole premise was parodying the 2000’s talent show era of music
And while it’s outside the scope of the topic of the video, Humanz was... something? Like a prescient not-exactly-protest album.
The concept Albarn wanted the collaborators for the album to work with was basically “trump just got elected, the world is ending, we’re throwing a last hurrah bash”. The recording for the album happened well in advance of the election when very few people thought he had a snowball’s chance in hell, so it was supposed to be a “hypothetical dark fantasy”.
It would almost be funny, if things hadn’t turned out so much worse than anybody was expecting.
It's notable that even though I own the album, I never realized it was anti-iraq-war. I don't know if they intentionally flew under the radar, but it never caught flack for it like the Dixie Chicks did.
It was commercially successful because majority of people did not catch on to its anti Iraq war sentiments.
Exactly the same case as the "wow, cool robot" meme. Most young people that became fans of Gorillaz became obsessively invested in the lore of the virtual band.
jay kj "I love Rage Against the Machine! Hell yeah, fuck robots!"
Definitely would have been a good point. Probably my favourite album.
I'm flabbergasted Radiohead's 2003 "Hail to the Thief" wasn't mentioned! It oozes protest!
Well, we were not paying attention.
One of the most interesting things about this topic that I was hoping would get brought up was the importance of the "emo" subculture, particularly for youth - and I'm using that term in terms of the general pop culture understanding of it. Yes, I know that "emo" is a misnomer and we could argue about semantics but I'm referring to the trends present in groups like Evanescence, My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Fall Out Boy, etc., aka what the mainstream generally terms as "emo." You brushed on it a little with the MCR shoutout, though I DO get why you didn't get into it - it wasn't necessarily outspokenly political stuff as a brand.
However, I think it's worth noting that there's a reason that scene got so big: most of its audience consisted of kids who were too young to vote but nonetheless had to bear the consequences of a truly boneheaded administration's shitty decisions. There were a lot of kids who had no memory of any kind of perceived "threat" on this scale and the coverage was EVERYWHERE. There was no avoiding it.
So if the country genre consisted of proud, jingoistic pronouncements of how you Can't Let The Terrorists Win, the "emo" subculture that rose in the early-to-mid-2000s consisted of wearing your heart on your sleeve, being unrepentant about your anger and your pain, and so on. A lot of it was definitely more personalized, very focused on stuff like relationships, but the overtones of disillusionment a lot of those acts carried was very much a real thing with kids and teenagers in that era (especially among closeted queer and mentally ill youth, who didn't otherwise have much of a mainstream outlet). A lot of those bands and groups were heavily influenced by Green Day's "American Idiot" - visually, sonically, thematically, and so on. How many of the big albums that "emo" bands released in the early-to-mid-2000s dealt with the subject of death, impending doom, an anger about things they felt they couldn't change, or coming to terms with the fucked up and broken parts of yourself - aka the general feeling that plagued practically everyone in that age bracket. There was no escaping that there was a war happening; it was in the news every day. But "emo" allowed a young generation to mourn the fact that it would shoulder the consequences of a war that literally nobody wanted.
Maybe it's because of the memories of what that felt like that I can still find all those songs and bands relevant now, when the personal and the political have become even further intertwined. I know I'm not the only "emo" who went back to these songs after the 2016 election.
I went off on this huge tangent, sorry! But I wanted to thank you for saying what I've been saying for years - that Green Day is Good, Actually, and they're still very outspoken against political establishments they don't care for. Any "sellout" that promptly turns around and uses that cash to criticize a powerful administration and punk even harder is the furthest thing from selling out, in my honest opinion.
I also felt myself going back to those bands, mostly MCR, and some goth music as well. I liked something a bit angry or that had a few different emotions involved.
fall out boy's album folie a deux has several anti-bush sentiments but no one besides emo kids listened to it :/
I agree with most of this; I was in middle school and then high school for the Bush years, and (along with just general teenage angst) distinctly remember a lot of political angst for an administration and war that I loathed but couldn't do anything about. So I would say there's a connection too. I remember the first time I heard "American Idiot" on the radio and literally, as a 13 year old, was moved.
this exactly!! i was hoping to find someone talking about this
This is what I THOUGHT the video was going to be about when I saw Green Day in the thumbnail, before realizing she was talking about Top-40-type music and remembered that emo was kind of a sub/counterculture (I was so proud to be "against the mainstream" I went out of my way to ignore "the pop culture" lol)
The greatest protest song of all time was from Animaniacs: "Oh I hate the government, more than you and me/ They stole my goldfish, and unplugged my tv"
😂😂😂
"Murder is a crime unless it was done by a policeman" .... damn that's a little too relevant rn
Know Your Rights by the Clash, ua-cam.com/video/5lfInFVPkQs/v-deo.html
It never stopped being relevant.
Pearl Vesper and got let out on parole
@@peral9728 and it took a week or protests and a torched precinct for him to be taken into custody
Whoa, a UA-cam comment from [DISTANT DECADE HERE], these are rare and valuable. ;-D
Art is a coping mechanism. It helps us process stuff and cause change. Praising the problem causing us to cope in the first place is like my mother telling me to "stop being so sad" because it's inconvenient to her. It's addressing the symptoms without addressing the reason why it's happening.
“I’m stuck at home why haven’t I written the great American novel?”
THIS IS SO ME
My thing is more like: Why can't I finish anything for university. I have so much time :(
It’s really strange how my brother was so into Green Day, and Nirvana, etc., and now he’s a HUGE republican! I’m like: “did they teach you nothing???”
@@Quasihamster Yeah man, tough decision. Slaughtering innocent children, or being respectful to your fellow human beings?
@@Quasihamster Oh no! Wokeness! Also known as not discriminating against people for things they can't control like race, gender, or sexuality!
@@Quasihamster Oh no! Wokeness! Also known as not discriminating against people for things they can't control like race, gender, or sexuality!
@@Quasihamster If you think being woke means discriminating against straight white men and telling people their struggles don't mean anything just because they've inherited certain forms of privilege, you don't understand being woke at all. Try learning about it from the people who believe in something instead of the people who want to tear it down.
@@Quasihamster admitting you don't believe in human rights is not the winning argument you think it is
As someone who is Green Day fan til I die, 'Green Day is our generation's Creedance' feels so wrong but so right.
I will never not love Greenday. That shit came out when I was 14. I was ultra angsty, angry, confused, depressed and with only some loose flards of anti-autority swirling around in my teenage brain that even with generous interpretation couldn't be confused for anything resembling a political worldview. If at that time American Idiot comes out you'll never be able to look back on it with anything but pure nostalgia, lmao.
And their really early albums are also just some really solid fun punk rock.
As a Gen Zer, I say take it. Our generation doesn’t really have an anti-establishment, anti-war rock band.
Same feeling. What have we become? Also.... hell yeah.
As a Creedence's fan I really hope that Cattle Decapitation is the Creedence of our time, not Green Day..
@@AliceDiableaux same here mate. green day got me through some shit and billie-joe was the first bi person i ever knew about. very formative for me :)
i will never forget hearing "Have You Forgotten?" as a kid and being horrified at the lyric about him wanting news networks to play the footage of 9/11 every day.
Taylor Swift mentioned the whole Dixie Chicks thing in her documentary and you can definitely see the effect it had on musicians and the group being used as a cautionary tale.
Then she had them on a track right after the time the documentary was set
I have more respect for the Dixe/Chicks being Southern women who broke their political stereotype and actually being empathetic and on the left. Even back then.
I wonder how different history would be if they'd leaned into it, hard. Like, there was no getting back the people who hated them, but they may have been able to appeal to other demographics
Really though, what did they expect? Protesting a popular president in his home state to a large group of people in his key voter demographic. What did they really expect to happen when they did that?
That would be like Taylor Swift doing a black lives matter show in honor of George Floyd and starting out with saying hey I just want to let everyone know we don't support Obama.
@@GeteMachine oh fuck off. they wanted to rep the stars and bars, they're losers. Just like all you confederate sympathizer cucks. Get fukt lol
This is so interesting as someone who lived through this era but wasn’t really old enough to fully understand and process everything happening. And like, I remember LOVING the Dixie Chicks and assuming they were more of the same country music but I am SHOOK to find out they were essentially cancelled for anti-war sentiment. This only reinforces my love for them tbh
Recently they also made a song called March March and changed their group name to just The Chicks in support of BLM
You're telling me.
I wasn't a Dixie Chicks fan, but I was an edgy little kid getting into Green Day around this time. I didn't know exactly what was going on in the world, but listening to American Idiot was one of the first political opinions I was exposed to.
The song not ready to make nice was a response to their former fans and the actions mentioned in the video. Their story is a lot more complicated than what could fit here. They won 5 grammys for their 2006 album (including album of the year) but couldn't sell out shows on tour to promote it.
‘Not ready to make nice’ by the Dixie chicks is their response, and it’s a bop
Tarquini that whole album is great, but that song is amazing - growing up (I was about 12 when it came out) and understanding the context made it even more so
I love that song
YES! I’m from Texas and liking the Dixie Chicks is still frowned upon... It’s a sore spot for me.
I would like to add some information about Pearl Jam's participation in all of this, since you barely mentioned them.
Back in early 00's, the band was in an all-time low: they were recovering from the Roskilde incident. Riot Act was (and still is) a very difficult album to listen to. Hard, low, heavy and very depressive at some points. It reflected the state of the band ad that time.
Vedder was very critical of the Bush administration, and wrote Bu$hleaguer about him, using baseball references and other analogies. When playing it in concerts, Eddie used to put a shiny suit and a mask resembling him, smoking cigars and doing dances to make fun of Bush -- including in states where republicans were the majority. You can see him get booed in a lot of these concerts, and Eddie just shrugs them off.
They were in a low point and still did what they thought was right.
Was wondering why no one mentioned PJ! Playing those songs at that time was crazy, but Eddie's always stood his ground.
I was never really into Pearl Jam but that sounds pretty bad ass. I'm going to have to track that album down and then check some live footage from that tour. Thanks for the heads up.
I saw Pearl Jam on the 2003 tour in Atlanta. Eddie brought out like 5 guys in W masks during Porch. It was so funny. Bushleager is ruthless, love that song!
"American Idiot is our Fortunate Son." I'm going to tell that to a friend of mine at some point and his head will explode.
I don't even know you, and my head exploded when she said that.
"All we got in 2003 was Black Eyed Peas"
Radiohead: *sad bleeping noises*
there is no harder roast than the lyric "maybe you'll be president, but know right from wrong". Like goddamn
Hail to the Thief's mostly somber resignation to political upheaval is pretty representative of the era (R.E.M's Around the Sun rings a bell). To me "You and Whose Army" before it had the more bonafide "resist" vibes. Even cerebral introverts need a little protest music here and there, if relatively ineffectual.
@@mattnapier3143 those 3 albums from Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief were such great snapshots of the time. Perfectly capturing that pessimistic view of modern culture and society. Not much has changed since then either so those albums hold even more weight now.
Green Day were always political. They came from Gilman Street punk rock, a DIY anti-authoritarian scene. They took Pansy Division, a gay punk band with songs like "Bill and Ted's Homosexual Adventure", on tour with them, after they broke big, because they wanted to challenge the new fans they'd picked up and because they respected the band. Remember when they chanted no trump, no kkk no fascist USA at the grammys or whatever? that chant was based off a song by MDC, aka Millions of Dead Cops, an 80s/90s hardcore band ("No war, no KKK no fascist USA"). Their lineage was political! Oh, btw, come out ye black and tans is miles better than kevin barry if we're talking irish republican protest songs :-)
Kevin Barry is a popular song in America
Pansy Division got mentioned, heck yes!
@@brendanmccabe8373 that makes sense, I think this video is from a very American perspective.
Yes come out you black and tans is the best shit
@@Ssmhcnmhsh Wait a second that's not pansy division
I feel like we're leaving out the part where Vietnam protest music was young people who didn't want to go to war and Iraq war promotion music was those same people, old now, who wanted (someone else) to go to war.
Well, guess who’s gonna deepdive into irish protest songs tonight...
"Oh ah, up the 'RA. Oh ah, up the 'RA."
maybe not that one
COME OUT YE BLACK AND TANS!
Seo Linn does a good version of Óró Sé do Bheatha Bhaile
Cause we find ourselves in the same old mess singing drunken lullabies
As a Vietnamese, thank you for acknowledging the millions of casualties suffered by Vietnam after the war. Many Americans wouldn't have for, perhaps, obvious reasons.
Also, loved Wake Me Up When September Ends growing up and I still do even now. That song basically defined my adolescence, so I'm glad to see it being appreciated.
I HAD AVOIDED THAT "IMAGINE" VIDEO WITH ALL MY POWER AND YOU SNEAK IT HERE.... WHY????
Same. And those few seconds felt like ages.
Imagine-rolled!!
You can wash it out with the 2004 cover of Imagine from A Perfect Circle.
REALLY! What Time Code?
I spent the past 5 years not watching any news from the USA, avoid all stuff on Trump or Trudeau, I barely no anything about the carona virus, and don't look into anything unless it is on a need to know basis, it is fun, if it effects me personally in my life or it is after the fact on a topic and all the dust has settled. I live in Canada and the other day a friend of mine told me "a part of a City was taken over in the USA" and I just stopped her there and told her I don't care till it is over and pops back up in my life because people get invested in the surplus of bull shit even though it doesn't effect them, if it is positive or negative, if they agree or disagree, or even if it is something they wouldn't care about normally or even if it is something they don't want to know about it but it is too easy to get caught up in bull shit and then end up getting stressed and thinking about it even if you don't want to. I normally don't shy away from controversial shit but it seems a lot of these topics are made to hook you in and I find it is better to look at the whole picture at the end and I find I am happier and my relationships with my friends are better... I did here that celebrities have bin making the most self centered, wacky, out of touch videos that is trying to get them attention and clout even though they are using human trauma like blood diamonds and I really don't want to see that cringy shit because it is the exact thing I am trying to avoid.
@@jfridy I honestly can't get into A Perfect Circle, it just reminds me of the worst Tool songs slowed way down but if you have any other songs that you think would change my mind I am open to the suggestions
Oh Lindsay Ellis’s 2020 video essay “Protest Music of the Bush Era”, we’re really in it now.
“Incomprehensible Millennial Rage” I need that on a t-shirt.
maybe we'll get a group discount on our order
Shit man, I'd buy that.
Hard same.
I want the "Incomprehensible GenX Caterwauling" T-shirt.
Honestly, the underground hip hop scene had some great protest music during this period. Artists like MF DOOM, Immortal Technique, Jedi Mind Tricks, Brother Ali, Atmosphere, etc. were producing incredible tracks in opposition to American Imperialism. The mainstream music industry was, of course, never going to give these artist the time of day, but it's important that today we remember that certain groups were ahead of their time and inspired much of music fueling the BLM protests today. (Sort of in the same way that "The Message" in 1982 inspired several decades of class conscious hip hop)
She didn't even mention gorillaz, like dirty harry was one of the most popular songs on demon days that shit was playing on the radio every time i turned it on
DOOM’s entire second verse on Strange Days is an anti-Iraq War song
@@georgecampbell3687 Strange ways, i believe its called.
Damn I should have read your comment before posting mine! Nailed it.
There all still producing amazing music
Lindsay having Chicago’s “You’re The Inspiration” as her ringtone for Todd is the best, subtlest burn
I don't get it. Is it because they dated ages ago?
@@aviendha1154 I think he is just refrencing Todd's well documented hatred for Chicago the only band he hates more than Maroon 5.
@@aviendha1154 Did they *actually* dated or was it just a channel-that-mustn't-be-named's bit?
@@AileynRed I honestly think is was the channel that must not be named.. They made the creators do a bunch of random nonsense drama stuff
Mari SP no they dated IRL for a good few years.
I wish you would have mentioned Rage Against The Machine’s “Testify” which referenced Al Gore being the same as Bush or even Outkast’s “Bombs Over Bagdad” which originally was about The Gulf War but was later mistaken for a Pro-Iraq war song.
If you think bush is the same as al gore you should get your head checked
Yes, all the Leftists in 2000 turned out to be so extremely right about how Gore and Bush were the same. So true.