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She's A Rebel


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In celebration of American Idiot: The Musical on Tour’s closing week, this week’s Song of the Week is She’s A Rebel, American Idiot’s 8th and shortest track, released in 2004.

Lyrically, in relation to the American Idiot story, She’s A Rebel is the point in which the Jesus of Suburbia starts to get side-tracked away from St Jimmy’s path of drugs and destruction, instead finding himself intoxicated by this girl called Whatsername. The song is a slap in the face, a two-minute, vibrant celebration of this bright new force of nature that has the JOS completely and utterly infatuated – she’s holding onto his “heart like a hand grenade”. To the JOS, she is “the revolution” and “dawning” of the new life that he’s been seeking (a lyrical reference back to the song Holiday; “this is the dawning of the rest of our lives”). Whatsername’s persona and spark energises the JOS back to life after his relative sedation in Give Me Novacaine (an energy that’s reflected by the upbeat sound of the song) and “brings the liberation” to him; the liberation he feels he “can’t define”, and “nothing comes to mind”, a nothing that includes his split-personality St Jimmy. She seals both the JOS and St Jimmy in “a double twist of fate” that is played out in the rest of the album.

In American Idiot: The Musical, She's A Rebel is mixed with Last Of The American Girls from 21st Century Breakdown, and is (in my humble opinion) one of the absolute highlights of the show.

This week’s video was filmed in February of 2005 in California for VH1’s Storytellers programme. The video is actually of both Give Me Novacaine and She’s A Rebel, as they transition into one another. She’s A Rebel starts at 3:30, but the highlight of the video starts at 4:23.

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

Lyrics:

She's a rebel, she’s a saint

She's salt of the earth

And she's dangerous

She's a rebel, vigilante

Missing link on the brink

Of destruction

From Chicago to Toronto

She's the one that they

Call old Whatsername

She's the symbol of resistance

And she's holding on my

Heart like a hand grenade

Is she dreaming what I'm thinking?

Is she the mother of all bombs?

Gonna detonate

Is she trouble like I'm trouble?

Make it a double twist of fate

Or a melody that

She sings the revolution

The dawning of our lives

She brings the liberation

That I just can’t define

Well nothing comes to mind

She's a rebel, she's a saint

She's salt of the earth

And she's dangerous

She's a rebel, vigilante

Missing link on the brink

Of destruction

She's a rebel, she’s a rebel, she’s a rebel, and she's dangerous

She's a rebel, she’s a rebel, she’s a rebel, And she's dangerous

*********************************************************************************************************

You can nominate songs for discussion as Song of the Week in the SotW Nominations and Archive thread, which contains links to each previous Song of the Week in its first post.

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This is one of my favorite songs from American Idiot (if you couldn't tell :lol:)!

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I love this song. One of my favorites. The lyrics are just awesome.

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Awesome song. I just love the melody during the "She sings the revolution" part.

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Love love love this song!!! I don't think I've heard this track live before, but I would love to!

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My mind always connects this song with Dookie's She. :P

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I've always loved She's A Rebel. The first time I heard it I just started dancing like an absolute crazy person. I love the energetic feel to it.

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I love this song, also for lyrics.

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"She's holding on my heart like a hand grenade". <3 One of my favorite songs from my most favorite album. :wub:

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My first true love :wub: Not sure if the girl in the song or the song itself though :P

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god, i haven't listened to this song for ages. it's a very good song tho :happy:

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"And she's holding on my heart like an hand grenade". Love it! :)

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I really love "She's A Rebel". It fits so perfectly in the whole album. :)

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I love She's a Rebel! This song is full of energy, and the lyrics are great! :)

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I used to listen to She's A Rebel non-stop back in the days! One of my fave songs from AI.

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I love the contrast this song gives to Give Me Novacaine. It's something that Green Day overdid on the AI, but they overdid it well. The upbeat, charged Holiday giving way to the mellow build-up of BOBD; the slow, introspective Are We the Waiting segueing into the psychotic fuck-you spectacle of St. Jimmy (the best such transition on the album, imo), and the melancholy feel of Novacaine leading into the driving and carefree She's a Rebel. It was definitely an overdone motif on AI, but because they picked the right songs to pair, it worked.

This also falls into the "songs that should never be made into an acoustic piece, yet somehow they strangely work when they are" category.

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This song is very underrated in my opinion. It's got great lyrics and the music during the "She sings the revolution" parts is one of the best music motifs on the whole album. Maybe it's overlooked because it's the shortest song.

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She's A Rebel!!! 2 minutes of pure happy energy!! :dance:

I love this song, it's my ringtone for text messages, but I must confess that it made me jump off my seat more than once :lol:

I also love Billie's dance during his solo, it makes me wanna dance too! :dance:

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I LOVE this song. It might not be my favourite from the album (or maybe it is), but for some reason whenever I think about American Idiot (the album) She's a Rebel is the first beat and song to come to mind (yes, even before American Idiot, the song, pops in there).... maybe it has something to do with link between the lyrics ("holding on my heart like a hand grenade") and the cover of the album, or maybe it's just because it has such a nice feeling of the album.

And the first video I ever saw of Green Day live, as well as the first video of them I ever downloaded, was one of Give me Novacaine/She's a Rebel (because Novacaine was their first song I truely obsessed with, but as a consequence, I heard a lot of She's a Rebel).

This was that video:

Anyways, whatever the reason, I really love this song, and the combination of Give Me Novacaine - She's a Rebel, truely blows my mind everytime. I finally got to see Novacaine played live in their 2010 tour in South America, now I only wish I ever get to see the two of them being played like in that video.

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Yes. Good song.

Love the music. It's fast, goes back and forth kinda like teasing. like nah-nah-nah-nah nah-nah

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In almost 8 years I have never noticed that this song is the shortest on AI. Weird.

It's an awesome song though and I've been enjoying it a lot recently. Whenever I listen to American Idiot, I'll listen to this song a couple times more than the others.

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