Green Day have shared a riotous video for their new single ‘Bobby Sox’, which appears on their new album ‘Saviors’ – watch it below.
‘Saviors’, the band’s 14th studio album, is out today (January 19) and has been previewed by the singles ‘Dilemma’, ‘The American Dream Is Killing Me’ and ‘Look Ma, No Brains!’.
“’Bobby Sox’” is one of my favourite songs on the album,” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a press release. “It’s the ’90S song that we never wrote. It started out being a song I wrote for my wife but as it materialized, I wanted to switch it up and added, ‘Do you wanna be my boyfriend?’ on top of ‘Do you wanna be girlfriend’… So the song becomes a kind of universal anthem.”
In a recent interview, Armstrong discussed ‘Bobby Sox’ in relation to the moral panic over trans issues, which he says is “fucking close-minded”.
Speaking to the LA Times, Armstrong recalled playing ‘Bobby Sox’ to a friend, who is a similar age to him. “And it brought a tear to his eye when he heard the second verse,” Armstrong said of the song’s lyrics, which explore gender fluidity.
The verse in question sees Armstrong sing: “Do you want to be my best friend? / You can drive me crazy all over again / And I’ll bore you to death / Doesn’t matter when we are in love / You’re not just any type of girl / My one true love and you’re my world / Do you wanna be my girlfriend? / Do you wanna be my boyfriend?”
Of ‘Bobby Sox’, Armstrong added: “Nowadays it’s more common for kids to be LGBTQ, and there’s more support. But for us, back in the day,” he continued, referring to the late ’80s and early ’90s, “that was like the beginning of when people were able to openly say things like that.”
When asked what Armstrong and his bandmates made of the current moral panic over transgender youths, he told the interviewer: “I just think they’re fucking close-minded. It’s like people are afraid of their children. Why would you be afraid? Why don’t you let your kid just be the kid that they are?”
Reviewing ‘Saviors’, NME said: “There’s some serendipity in the band hitting the road to celebrate 30 years of ‘Dookie’ and 20 years of ‘American Idiot’ later this summer. Not only does ‘Saviors’ spiritually bridge the gap between the two, but it uses the palette of the best of the band to tell us something else.
“Look to the artwork: ‘Dookie’ was a cheeky carpet-bombing of shit, ‘American Idiot’ was a hand grenade, ‘Saviors’ is an act of defiance met with a shrug; a band saying, “We’re still here and we’re still fucked”.
It was confirmed this week that the band will play both ‘Dookie’ and ‘American Idiot’ in full during their 2024 ‘Saviors‘ world tour.
Nothing But Thieves, The Hives, Donots, The Interrupters, Maid Of Ace, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, and The Linda Lindas are set to join as support across select dates and tickets can be found here.