By Carlos Velasco, Courier Copy Editor
As Inauguration Day passes and people tremble or stand tall about the outcome and future of the presidency Green Day releases a new lyric video criticizing the times we live in now.
Green Day is a band that started in 1986 and they were a pretty popular band from then on. Their albums dropped in popularity as the music industry changed as did the taste of music listeners. Don’t confuse the drop of interest in this band’s music with them not making good music as they always have but their most recent album was a bit of a let down.
A song on their new album “Revolution Radio” called “ Troubled Times” is gaining some attention as it talks about modern day topics and even the presidency. Green Day doesn’t usually talk about politics and modern time problems when they do they tend to strike a chord in people who follow and listen to them.
“Troubled Times” starts off by addressing “Love and Peace on Earth” and how it has no purpose or use as long as it’s exclusive. More specifically only the wealthy and powerful tend to have peace and love.
Next the song has a line, “where’s the truth in written word if no one reads it” which could be taking a subtle shot at people who don’t read up on political news and news in general. Mainly speaking to ignorant people who shut out politics and history because they think it can’t affect them or that it doesn’t matter.
Following this the song talks about “a new day dawning” which could be interpreted as a new administration who runs and directs our government and this is upheld by a rather extreme slide of Donald Trump with his face covered by his hair spazzing out radically and his iconic “Make America Great Again’ hat to top it off
Now, after all this which is only the beginning of the song the title of the song is said and it cuts to a series of images collaged together all of which cover some aspect of racism and discrimination. A rather large image of MLK Jr. slides up your screen and drawn in tears start flowing down the images face which is a hard hitting visual to see let alone be followed and preceded by more meaningful images which serve their purpose in showing evidence that back up their lyrics.
Another image that really needs to be brought to the light is Donald Trump and visuals of the KKK behind him or as one scene shows, very jagged teeth with the infamous KKK logo within the teeth. Green Day is really trying to get a point across that they believe Donald Trump is receiving some kind of major support from the KKK, possibly helping him win the presidency.
I could go for days about the very explicit and purposeful images and ideas etched into this video but i’m going to try to sum up what you have been reading about like this; Green Day’s new song called “Troubled Times” shows graphic and explicit images throughout the whole video and every inch of the screen you see is covered with some kind of image or meaning and it makes you want to pause the video every time a new scene is displayed and that’s what I did after hearing the song or watching the video.
If you want to see Green Day’s political views, the whole video should do more than suffice, in fact it can inform you on something you didn’t know and I strongly suggest you watch the video and write a response as a comment.
