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Jesus of Suburbia


J'net

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This week's Song of Two Weeks is Jesus of Suburbia. I think this one will require two weeks of discussion, and I expect the discussion to be outstanding (like the song). Please use this thread to discuss your thoughts and feelings about Jesus of Suburbia.

American Idiot was released September 21, 2004, by Reprise Records. It was Green Day's first album to hit #1 on the charts and has since gone platinum three times.

There's too much to say about this song in the OP, and I'm looking forward to hearing all your thoughst. Aside from just sharing your thoughts and feelings and favorite section, tell me what you think about the shortened version. Given that the song probably would have received very little or no radio play in its entirety, do you think the shortened version did the song justice, or could it have been done differently to be more effective?

Here's an awesome video – and I hope you'll all share your favorite vids of this one. There are SO many good ones!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i22E6FLqkQ0[/media]

Jesus of Suburbia Lyrics

. JESUS OF SUBURBIA

I'm the son of rage and love,

The Jesus of suburbia,

From the bible of "none of the above",

On a steady diet of soda pop and ritalin,

No one ever died for my sins in hell,

As far as I can tell,

At least the ones I got away with

But there's nothing wrong with me,

This is how I'm supposed to be,

In a land of make believe,

That don't believe in me

Get my television fix,

Sitting on my crucifix,

The living room in my private womb,

While the Mom's and Brad's are away,

To fall in love and fall in debt,

To alcohol and cigarettes and Mary Jane,

To keep me insane and doing someone else's cocaine

II. CITY OF THE DAMNED

At the center of the earth,

In the parking lot,

Of the 7-11 where I was taught,

The motto was just a lie

It says: home is where your heart is,

But what a shame,

'Cause everyone's heart,

Doesn't beat the same,

We're beating out of time

City of the dead,

At the end of another lost highway,

Signs misleading to nowhere,

City of the damned,

Lost children with dirty faces today,

No one really seems to care

I read the graffiti,

In the bathroom stall,

Like the holy scriptures in a shopping mall,

And so it seemed to confess,

It didn't say much,

But it only confirmed that,

The center of the earth,

Is the end of the world

And I could really care less

III. I DON'T CARE

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't care

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't care

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't care

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't,

I don't care if you don't care

Everyone Is So Full Of Shit!

Born and raised by hypocrites,

Hearts recycled but never saved,

From the cradle to the grave,

We are the kids of war and peace,

From Anaheim to the middle east,

We are the stories and disciples of,

The Jesus Of Suburbia

Land of make believe,

And it don't believe in me,

Land of make believe,

And I don't believe,

And I don't care!

IV. DEARLY BELOVED

Dearly beloved, are you listening?

I can't remember a word that you were saying,

Are we demented? Or am I disturbed?

The space that's in between insane and insecure

Oh therapy can you please fill the void?

Am I Am I retarded or am I just overjoyed?

Nobody's perfect and I stand accused,

For the lack of a better word, and that's my best excuse

V. TALES FROM ANOTHER BROKEN HOME

To live and not to breathe,

Is to die in tragedy,

To run, to run away,

To find what you believe,

And I leave behind,

This hurricane of fucking lies,

I lost my faith to this,

This town that don't exist

So I run,

I run away

To the light of masochists,

And I leave behind,

This hurricane of fucking lies,

And I walked this line,

A million and one fucking times,

But not this time

I don't feel any shame,

I won't apologize

When there ain't nowhere you can go,

Running away from pain,

When you've been victimized,

Tales from another broken home

You're leaving...

You're leaving...

You're leaving...

Ah you're leaving home.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You can nominate songs for discussion as Song of the Week in the Song Discussions thread, which contains links to each previous Song of the Week from 9/14/2009 forward in its original post.

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My favourite song EVER. I won't even try to explain how much it means to me.

:wub:

...Okay, I'll come back with an extremely long post later :P

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One of the most epic Green Day songs!!!

I love this song so much!I never get tired of it and it's lyrics are just perfect!

What can you say about a song like this!

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YES!! thank you J'net!! :runaround::runaround::runaround:

i'll be back with my long post i promised in the song discussion thread in a while..... :dance::dance::dance:

EDIT: posted it further down on this page

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Whenever I hear this one section-

"I don't feel any shame,

I won't apologize

When there ain't nowhere you can go,

Running away from pain,

When you've been victimized,

Tales from another broken home"

I always well up just a bit, where as when I hear it live you literally have to swim away from me :lol: Hearing Billie change the words to `we` always gets me, because each and everyone of us in our own little way can connect to this song. That's why I love it so much :happy:

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finally JoS !!! :woot:

oh my god .. probably the most amazing song on earth. :wub:

this thread is gonna be sooo interesting :thumbsup: i mean that song is freakin 9 minutes long

and those lyrics blow me away every time ..

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Jesus of Suburbia. :woot::wub:

What can I say about it.. it's just epic, I love it so much. (Homecoming's even better imo/as good as JOS)

Especially live. It's really true. When you're in the crowd, and you're singing along to every line.. it's.. yeah, a feeling I can't really describe. It's amazing.

Since this is the sotw now, I'll repost my answer in the Question and Answer thread, maybe more of you have an idea of what Billie really says after the Land of make believe line in I Don't Care:

Idk. It could be nonsense/gibberish again, like Billie does at the end of Hitchin' a Ride. I've been listening to this part after Land of Make Believe over and over again. I still can't clearly hear what he sings, but I do think he's saying actual words. To me it sounds something like "Saint.. it's another lie." or like "Say (it), it's another lie." right now. Something being a lie would make sense, since it's a "land of make believe", so full of lies/being fake and all that.

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Favourite part of the song

"Everyone Is So Full Of Shit!

Born and raised by hypocrites,

Hearts recycled but never saved,

From the cradle to the grave,

We are the kids of war and peace,

From Anaheim to the middle east,

We are the stories and disciples of,

The Jesus Of Suburbia"

If i have the song on but miss this part because im talking or thinking about something else, I have to go back. I like that on the last tour they let the crowd sing "The Jesus of Suburbia" line

Definitely one of the biggest Highlights of a Green Day concert :happy:

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I don't even like saying that this song is my "all-time favorite song"... It's really just in a whole separate league than any other song or piece ever made... I find that it just has so much meaning, at least for me personally... If I sit down and really just listen through it, I can't help but tear up a little... It's just so theatrical and epic, and the story it tells through the lyrics is beyond anything I've ever heard, especially the whole Rage & Love thing that shows through the characters...

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I'm going to need a couple of hours to put together something that will (even remotely) do this song (and how much it means to me) justice. Stay tuned... :wub:

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Before I listened to JOS for the first time, I thought I wouldn't like it because it's too long.

Then, it became one of my favorite songs of ever. It's simply perfect!

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this is an epic song and definitly my favourite Green Day song. It has everything and there are no words to describe how much I love hearing it live. Wonder what the record is for Mr Freeze holding the piano bit...tales from another broken..................................................

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Fuck yeah Jesus of Suburbia, and fuck yeah Pinkpop. :banana:

This song is fucking amazing. I can't single out a thing right now that I think is particularly great, but the song is made up of those things, build out of bricks of awesome. The five parts are songs on their own, yet fit seamlessly together and make one hell of a song. The music sometimes gets softer, but the song does not let down or sink in ever, and it is truly an epic song, both in the popular and original sense of the word.

There are too many great things in this song; I'll just leave it to reacting to others for what I like about each part, or this post would become a giant incoherent essay, haha.

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Jesus of Suburbia :wub:

It took me about 3-4 listens to understand the genius of this song.

I love how it's a 9 minute song but I never grow bored when listening. At the end of it you feel like you really understand who the Jesus of Suburbia is and start to relate to him immediately. The lyrics are to die for and the changing melodies flow together perfectly. It's kind of like a flow of thoughts, his thoughts change so dramatically but move along perfectly. As I read the lyrics alone I realize just how much it does look disconnected when you read it like that, but when the song plays it flows beautifully.

I love this song. LOVE LOVE LOVE.

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This song. Hmmm. This song. I have no words. This isn't even a song. Its much more than a song. It gives me chills every time I listen to it, and most of the time I cry at the end. I remember the first time I listened to it, and then I remember the first time I showed it to my friend (she thought it was shit, but whatever). I remember when this song inspired me to draw a really awesome piece of art. I have it on my wall. And last of all, I remember singing along to this song with Billie, and hundreds of other people. That moment of belonging and being understood, and having a special connection with everybody around me. Yes, this song is good.

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My favourite song EVER. I won't even try to explain how much it means to me.

:wub:

I agree.

This is my favorite song. (and I love sooo much the video. I'm always ike this :wub: when I watch it)

It's amazing.

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This is the song that made me buy American idiot...I just listened to it over and over and over again...and I remember when the video came out and it was constantly played on much music and it won the song battle and was always at the top of the much music count downs. I feel like this song came at a very defining time in my life.

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What can I even say about this song? It embodies everything I love about Green Day, and it's just everything to me. Each section means something to me, and like Billie said on twitter, the meanings have changed and evolved as I've grown up. It will always be relevant to me, and I will always use it to get me through the tough times. The first time I heard it live I burst into tears because I'd wanted to experience it for so long.

My favourite lyrics at the moment:

And there's nothing wrong with me,

This is how I'm supposed to be,

In a land of make believe,

That don't believe in me

It kind of sums up how I feel right now. Like I've decided that I want to be a professional musician, but no one I know really thinks I can do it. But the way we're living now, anyone can be "famous" and successful, so we kind of are living in the "land of make believe". But as soon as I voice my ambitions, I'm told it's impossible and it's not gonna happen. I don't know if any of that even made sense, but that's what JOS is to me.

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Long rambling post coming up!

Sometimes I don't give this song as much attention as I should, but it really does have to be one of the greatest things ever written, especially the lyrics and how they're put together with the music. Although certainly in my top 25 it's not my all time favourite, but it's like it's in some way seperate from everything else... even Homecoming doesn't have that feeling to it, despite how much of a great song that is, too. The first few times I heard JOS I didn't really listen to the words, but for a while now sometimes I have to stop to think about the lyrics because they just grab you so much. Lines like "I read the graffiti in the bathroom stall like the holy scriptures of the shopping mall / ...the center of the Earth is the end of the world" and the part from "everyone's so full of shit" to "from Anaheim to the Middle East" are just so... I don't know how to describe it. But if I picked out every amazing line from the song and explained why it's amazing, my post would be a million pages long.

I don't remember it exactly, but on BIAB Billie says something about even though the song's not about him, it sometimes reflects aspects of his life that are wrapped up in it, and when thousands of people are screaming that song back at you it reflects what their lives are differently wrapped up in and what it all means to them, too. That's not exactly right but yeah, that describes it almost perfectly. Every time I listen to it I hear what it already reflects about my life and new meanings too, it has a million different meanings and one big meaning all at the same time. I can relate to even the parts that aren't so relevant to me, because when you listen to it, every person hears their own meaning in there. Lines that don't reflect your life at all can become metaphors that do reflect it.

Basically, this song's fucking awesome. I'd continue rambling, but lucky for you guys, my dinner's going cold :lol:

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This song...oh god.

It is, and always has been, and always will be my favourite song, and I personally think it's the best song ever written by Billie and maybe one of the best songs ever written. The world 'epic' is thrown around a lot these days but there's simply no other way to describe this song. To explain how much it means to me and why is probably going to take more brainpower than I possess.

Every single line of every single verse of every single part of this song is epic. The "I'm the son of rage and love" is iconic at this point, and is a recurring theme in the whole album and even in 21stCB. The rest of that first part is just someone feeling they're throwing their life away, and someone getting completely apathetic and it's almost scary in a way.

City of the Damned is just complete, through-and-through lyrically genius. My favourite lyric of all time is in it - "It says home is where your heart is but what a shame, 'cause everyone's heart doesn't beat the same." That line to me is all about someone who is really unhappy with their life and their home and they just want to leave - and I, and millions of other people, can relate to that so much. This entire part is just amazing, I really can't describe it.

"I don't care if you don't." This part just screams to me like someone who feels neglected or something like that, and they feel that they're not cared about, so they've stopped caring about everything too.

"Everyone's so full of shit, born and raised by hypocrites." That's my favourite line in this part because I've felt like that so many times - anger towards everyone.

Dearly Beloved is absolutely beautiful, in a slightly scary way. The line "Nobody's perfect and I stand accused, for lack of a better word and that's my best excuse." It's amazing, really amazing. "Nobody's perfect" is the excuse that everyone uses when they do something wrong, and that line is calling people out who use it all the time when they can't explain themselves - "I stand accused for lack of a better word."

Tales From Another Broken Home - the JoS character is finally fed up and leaving the town, and it brings him - and whoever's listening to that song - a sense of liberation. "To run, to run away, to find what you believe." At the same time, the only song that ever made me cry is this one - the "I don't feel any shame, I won't apologize, when there ain't nowhere you can go / Running away from pain when you've been victimized, tales from another broken..." part. I don't know why, but this part really just...ugh. I can't explain it.

I tried. I really did, but I still can't capture why this song really means that much to me and so many others. It's beyond words. I just know that this song is never, ever, ever going to get old for me, never going to get skipped and will always have a special place in my heart. :wub:

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