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To start the new Song of the Week I wanted to do the song Holiday. It is the third song off of Green Day’s studio album American Idiot and it’s also featured on their live albums, Bullet in a Bible and Awesome as F**k. It is almost eight years since it was released as a single and it is closely connected to the song Boulevard of Broken Dreams both through their music videos and through the lyrics.
It did okay in the charts, with two 1st places, one 5th place and some more in the US, 11th place in the UK, 13th in Ireland and New Zealand, 19th in Norway, 21st in Canada, 24th in Australia and only 50th in Germany. Did the chart results influence your experience of the song in any way?
Green Day has talked a lot about the album in general and the song Holiday, along with the rest of the album, is clearly politically loaded. Billie Joe said in an interview (which can be found at NPR music) that he thinks “Holiday is a series of questions. It's like, you're trying to battle your way out of your own ignorance”. Also before every time they play it live Billie Joe screams “This song is not Anti-American, it’s anti-war!” A lot of people assumes it is against president Bush and the wars he started as a president. What do you think? Is that it, or is there even a deeper meaning behind it?
What does the song mean to me? Holiday is the song that got me into Green Day. I heard it for the first time when a guy tried to play it on guitar at my school and somebody said that it was Green Day. The same day I went home and asked my older brother what song it was the guy kept playing all the time and luckily he did. I must have been 12-13 years old at that time and my understanding of English was far from what it is today. After some translating and looking up the song meanings though, I understood that it wasn’t a song about taking a holiday or just the beginning of the rest of our lives, but that the title was merely a metaphor.
“A representative of Deutschland now has the floor!” Here is Green Day performing Holiday live at Rock am Ring in Germany, 2005! After watching half of the live videos out there, my choice were between this HD video, or the live performance for Awesome As F**k, or a video that annoyed me because the camera man only followed Billie Joe through the whole song. I mean, come on. He’s not a solo artist, just the frontman and we want to see the rest of the band too!
Lyric:
Hear the sound of the falling rain,
Coming down like and Armageddon flame,
The shame,
The ones who died without a name,
Hear the dogs howling out of key,
To a hymn called "Faith and Misery",
And bleed the company lost the war today
I beg to dream and differ,
From the hollow lies,
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
On Holiday
Hear the drum pounding out of time,
Another protester has crossed the line,
To find the money's on the other side,
Can I get another Amen?
There's a flag wrapped around the score of men,
A gag,
A plastic bag on a monument
The representative from California has the floor
Zieg Heil to the president gas man,
Bombs away is your punishment,
Pulverize the Eiffel towers,
Who criticize your government,
Bang, Bang goes the broken glass,
Kill all the fags that don't agree,
Trials by fire setting fire,
Is not a way that's meant for me,
Just cause,
Just cause because we're outlaws, yeah!
I beg to dream and differ,
From the hollow lies,
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives,
I beg to dream and differ,
From the hollow lies,
This is the dawning of the rest of our lives
This is our lives on holiday
This is my take on the song, but I'm interested in hearing yours. Feel free to give your opinion on it here and also check out the SOTW reboot thread for what songs will be next and when/how you can apply for them, or just to let us know what songs you would like to see there soon.
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And of course the message is superb too.
Love the riff of this song!
