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When It's Time


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Heart like a hand grenade :wub: Good memories.

This song makes me cry every time I listen to it. It's by far the most beautiful love song I have ever heard! Especially if you consider the fact that Billie wrote it at the age of nineteen. NINETEEN.

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I'll be honest, the first time I heard this song was on the radio, and I didn't even realise (as I hadn't really been listening to the DJ) who it was until about half-way through when I thought... Hey, it sounds a bit like Billie.. hmmm.

So then it was announced, that is certainly was Green Day's 'When It's Time', and I thought.. oh. well., it wasn't great. My mum agreed - 'well that wasn't very good, was it?!' - though I did defend my precious Green Day and told her she didn't know what she was going on about, so go back to your ironing dear.

So when I turn up to Wembley Stadium on a beautiful day a few weeks later, i didn't expect my mind to be changed.But hearing Billie play that on the acoustic encore - which, i swear almost brought a tear to my eye - I could not have been more in love with such a beautiful and emotional song. Hearing a song live is so different to on the record, and I'm so glad I heard it that night because I now really understand what it's about and how much i really love it!

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It makes me think of all the love songs that are out there - so many loud and lavish statements, and here's this quiet little song, so honest, so vulnerable, so full of humility and gratitude. That it comes out of such a gritty, bleak place - the locked-up, lonely place, in the company of those losers - makes 'I love you' shine so strong, this hard-won prize, the time and the right to say 'I love you'. It gets said four times, but it feels like it's said over and over again, that every line of this song is 'I love you', because it leaps out and blazes and becomes the all of everything. When it comes to ' I figured out, I - LOVE - YOU' - times stands still, and Billie Joe just brings it. He stops time to be in the living moment of love, to realize it and inhabit it, and it's so fucking beautiful.

I love it live - production stuff is superfluous to this song, it's radiant in itself, a raw and beautiful punk song that just happens to take a ballad form. Random thing is my memory of singing it at the top of my voice in the pit at Marlay Park - it was a wonderful song to be singing right then, under the nite sky - and this guy ever so politely asking me what album it was from, and me carefully explaining about the musical and the album. That I could have a conversation like that kind of demonstrates how wild and crazy a pit it was - not, lol!!

To all of which I must add - when it's time to say 'I love you' is whenever you feel it. Don't wait for a special day, don't look for a formal moment - as often as you feel it, tell them, right then and there - here and now. :)

That's poetry describing poetry again, Angeline.....thank you. :wub:

There are some Green Day songs that are all about the "Rage" side of Mr. Rage'n'Love. This one is all about the love. Simple, sweet, innocent, and absolutely angelic. The cast album production of it was I think the first time when my reaction to Billie's vocals was "Ok, this is a slice of fucking heaven you're listening to." Even moreso than Last Night On Earth.

The song is just *so* personal and private, and Billie is opening up and sharing with the rest of us this little glimpse of one thing that makes his relationship with Adie work as well as it does. She is his muse, his inspiration, the one who tells him that with her, it's safe to let loose all this conflicting, turbulent emotion he carries with him. To that end I think Adie is part of the glue that's responsible for Green Day's success, and I was fortunate to be able to tell her as much when I briefly met her last April 22 at AIOB in New York. Without her, the best of Billie's creative expression has no outlet and Green Day simply wouldn't be the same band. At worst, without Adie to help keep him grounded, Billie's bottled-up private pain and conflict could have actually led him over the edge.

So when I listen to When It's Time, I see Billie and his two best friends serenading the love of his life and the source of both his inspiration and his sanity in this insane world -- and it crushes me, every.single.time. I think I can understand why they kept it to themselves for so long, and yet I'm also so glad that Billie's work on the AI musical eventually led him to send it Michael Mayer's way -- and to ultimately let the rest of us delight in it along with them.

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I've always been quite fond of BJ's ability to beautifully, poetically express what he feels. From heart to pen to paper.

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Y'know, I really really think they murdered it on the recording =/ It sounds so generic and over-produced or something, I don't even know. But when you hear it live and it's just Billie and his guitar, it is truly beautiful :wub:

Oh and I love when he stops after the "I figured out..." and then someone usually shouts "I LOVE YOU" and he goes "I love you too" asdfghjkl; :wub:

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anyone who says this song isn't beautiful is dumb. such a great, great song.

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I heard them play this song for the first time this year and it makes mr cry. It's so wonderful. :cry:

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I love this song. Watching Billie start to cry while playing it at Wembley Stadium was the most emotional things I have ever seen. It's beautiful.

Billie starts to cry while playing it?? really ??? Do you have the video / clip ??

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It was so awesome when Billie played the song in the acoustic encore in Munich on June 11 this year :wub:

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Billie starts to cry while playing it?? really ??? Do you have the video / clip ??

Yeah, I don't have a video i was watching it on the big screen next to me and his eyes started to well up and I remember him crying. I'm sure if you YouTube it they'll be a clip.

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I almost melted when I first heard this song... So beautiful, simple and of course romantic <3.

And I agree that the live versions are better... They sound more emotional and truthful, I guess.

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This song is adorable, I havent heard it live, but I love it anyway. It´s awesome how Billie shows his love to Addie.

When I first heard it I almost cried. The lyrics are so lovely,romantic and beautiful,

I want someone to write me a song like this one, too :)

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This song is adorable, I havent heard it live, but I love it anyway. It´s awesome how Billie shows his love to Addie.

When I first heard it I almost cried. The lyrics are so lovely,romantic and beautiful,

I want someone to write me a song like this one, too :)

should I write you one? :eyebrow: :lol:

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I love this song :wub: I've never really taken that much to the studio version that much though. The simpler it is the better. :D

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