Following a polarizing performance in New Year’s Eve, Green Day is back with a defiant new single from their forthcoming album Saviors, due out January 19. “One Eyed Bastard” is an anthem to vendetta, introducing a mob-like speaker demanding obeisance.
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The single opens with the lines I’m making an offer that you cannot deny / You won’t be laughing when I’m making you cry. It also includes a pre-chorus praising revenge: Vendetta is a friend of mine / Revenge is sweeter than wine / I never asked to hear your god-damned feelings / Get on your knees when you’re kissing my ring.
Song Reflects on “Bad Times in Life”
Overall, it’s a catchy song, but doesn’t hit as hard as “The American Dream is Killing Me” or “Look Ma, No Brains!” that the band released in late 2023. “One Eyed Bastard” has the usual Green Day sound which is comforting and familiar, but the lyrics seem a little too surface level for the band. Their usual fare is divisive, political, and deeper than a few Godfather references. Unless Green Day is setting up something bigger with “One Eyed Bastard,” the single falls a little flat.
“Lyrically, I was just reflecting on bad times in life,” Billie Joe Armstrong said in a press release for the single. According to the frontman, the song started out with just a riff, and grew from there. “That’s the thing about nostalgia, sometimes you think, ‘That was an awful time,’” he continued. “Everybody’s got that ugly place in their life where they have to deal with ugly thoughts—it could be like revenge or whatever. Thankfully, I have an outlet in songwriting.”
This new single comes on the heels of some controversy for Green Day, as some supporters of former President Donald Trump are upset the band altered one of their lyrics in “American Idiot” during a New Year’s Eve performance. Armstrong changed the lyric I’m not a part of a redneck agenda to I’m not a part of the MAGA agenda, referencing the former president’s movement.
Those who support the former president threw a bit of a fit about the lyric change on social media. Even Elon Musk got in on it, writing on Twitter/X, “Green Day goes from raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it.”
Photo by Daniel Boczarski/Getty Images for Harley-Davidson
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