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Green Day gave fans their long-awaited Coachella headlining performance on April 12, 2025, by starting with their iconic 2004 track American Idiot. However, instead of the song's original lyrics stating "I'm not a part of a redneck agenda", the band changed it to "I'm not part of the MAGA agenda" garnering a lot of attention toward the track's political tone.
For the unversed, MAGA is an abbreviation for Make America Great Again, a political slogan associated with Donald Trump's 2016 and 2024 presidential campaigns. On the other hand, American Idiot is one of the band's best-selling albums, given it became their first No.1 album in the US and sold 267,000 copies in the first week of release in September 2004.
Previously, Green Day also made a similar change in their American Idiot lyrics during their January 2025 concert in South Africa, wherein they changed the lyrics to "I'm not a part of the Elon agenda."
Green Day's bassist comments on how the band changing its American Idiot lyrics "provoked conversation"
In January 2024, Green Day's bassist and co-founder Mike Dirnt talked to Rolling Stone about the band's performance on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest wherein the band performed their hits including American Idiot.
During the New Year's performance, the band's lead singer, Billie Joe Armstrong changed the original lyrics from talking about the redneck agenda to MAGA agenda. Hence, Coachella 2025 wasn't the first time the band highlighted a political undertone with their hit song.
While the change in lyrics garnered a mixed reaction at the time, similar to the current reactions, the band's bassist questioned the people's expectations, citing that an update in the lyrics was normal given that they were Green Day and the song was twenty years old.
Talking about the impact of their lyrical change, Mike Dirnt said:
“I think the best part about it is that it provoked conversation. It got people talking. First it was rhetorical, and then it got into conversation. Anytime you can get people talking, you’re always going to have the loudest voices [heard first], and then everyone else in the room is going to figure out what it really means.”
Commenting on what made the band think it was the right time to swap lyrics with a political tone in 2024, Dirnt mentioned:
“I think it’s a wider statement than Trump. It’s more important than him. It speaks to the fact that Billie’s dad was a Teamster truck driver, and his mom was a waitress, and somehow they could afford to raise five kids and buy a home, and that just doesn’t work for everybody anymore. We are back-a**wards right now.”
American Idiot is not the only song that was performed with changed lyrics. The multiple Grammy-winning band also changed the lyrics of their song Holiday. Before the song started Billie Joe exclaimed, "This song is anti-war!" and then sang, “Running away from pain like the kids in Palestine."
The change in American Idiot's lyrics grabbed the attention of the band's fans and the Coachella audience. However, another incident making headlines was a firework during Green Day's performance that hit a palm tree, resulting in the tree catching fire in the closeby artist section.
