“We’re guilty of rock music trying to write the feel-good song of the year, in a lot of ways,” says Billie Armstrong, frontman of Green Day.
During an appearance on KROQ, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong talked about the band’s new song ‘Father of All…’, as well as the band’s new song, their massive tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer, and the current state of rock music, which he believes Green Day has negatively affected.
Asked on what he can tell the audience about the new tune, Billie replied (transcribed by Ultimate Guitar):
“Well, it was sort of the first song that kind of kicked off the new era for us when we were doing demos.
“I don’t know, I had the rhythm and the beat to it, me and Tre [Cool, drums] were messing around in the studio, and I was, like, ‘How do I sing like this? What do I do? I want to do something different,’ and he was, like, ‘Oh, try sing like Prince.’ He’s dead, so why not me? [Laughs]”
Kroq: Where is the place for actual rock and roll music in 2019?
“I think that it’s lost its attitude in a lot of ways. I think that a lot of – me included – we’re guilty of rock music trying to write the feel-good song of the year, in a lot of ways.
“And it’s, like, nobody wants to feel good, I think rock music is supposed to make you feel bad, like, a bad motherfucker, as they say.
“And that’s kind of what we’re going for on the next thing, just, like, let’s give a big kick in the ass to rock and roll.”
That song, it’s fantastic. Is it representative of the album?
“Yeah, I think so. I think it’s a great representation of it.”
‘Father of All dot-dot-dot,’ is there more to the title than just that?
“I just thought it was just, like, a badass title. I think it could be sort of related to the current administration, but without getting too political, We have a new album [‘Father of All Motherfuckers’] coming out next year, and it’s the shortest record we’ve made since [1995’s] ‘Insomniac.'”
How many songs did you have at the highest point?
“For this record, I think about 17. Maybe we’ll just put out another album next year or something like that. We don’t know because we are off of our contract with Warner.”
Did we mention when the album was coming out?
“February 7th, yeah, in 2020.”
