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RevRad's Lyrics and Song Meanings - What we know so far.


Stefano Bras

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As the title says, I wanted to collect all the info we know so far off the brand new album, Revolution Radio, and make a thread to keep track of the songs and discuss our predictions, speculations and overall thoughts on the songs' meanings and lyrics, hopefully this thread will be worthy enough to don't get removed by a mod haha. 

Feel free to give any information I may have missed and I will add it.

Somewhere Now:

Spoiler

The album opener has been described as dreamy, almost Guided by Voices–like acoustic interludes and Who-style anthemic bursts and a "middle-finger opener". Along with 'Bang Bang', Somewhere Now was one of the first songs to be made for the album.

Tre Cool thinks he did his best drumming ever on it!

The song is about Armstrong feeling "spiritually broken."

"It's just that gloom and trying to rise above it. That's sort of what the record [and the song] is about."

Billie Joe Armstrong calls the first line – "I'm running late to somewhere now that I don't want to be" – one of his all-time favorites. "It's my favorite beginning of a record that we've ever had, I think it's so relatable, whether it's going to your job or going to the dentist."

The song also touches on Armstrong's post-rehab struggles: "How do you deal with dealing with yourself? Before it was, I'll have a beer. Now, you have to sort of learn how to breathe a little bit more. I have never been good at boredom. I never know what to do when it's, like, you and you're alone with yourself." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone.

Lyrics:

   "I'm running late to somewhere now that I don't want to be"

    "I put the riot in patriot"

    "How did life on the wild side get so dull"

Bang Bang:

Spoiler

Described as "hard, fast blast of searing righteousness, Dookie-ish energy" and also "The fastest, most aggressive song on the album", Bang Bang's is written from the point of view of a mass shooter.

Bang Bang was the first song recorded for the album.

"It was refreshing that it came so naturally to write a song like 'Bang Bang', which is one of the best punk songs I've ever scribbled. And it just sort of happened. I didn't think about it too much. I showed it to the guys. I'm like, 'This feels like Green Day.' I showed it to Mike and Tre and they were floored." - Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

 "Bang Bang is about american gun culture and the mentally insane, which could date back to Basket Case, really. It's about the kid that went on a shooting spree in Santa Barbara in 2014; to see him uploading his manifesto on Facebook and whatever else he was using, and the narcissism and this sort of psychotic behaviour". -Billie Joe, Kerrang!

"It's about the culture of mass shooting that happens in America mixed with narcissistic social media. There's this sort of rage happening, but it's also now being filmed and we all have ourselves under surveillance. To me, that is so twisted. To get into the brain of someone like that was freaky. It freaked me out. After I wrote it, all I wanted to do was get that out of my brain because it just freaked me out." - Billie Joe, Rolling Stone.

"'Bang Bang' is the most aggressive single we've ever had. I didn't plan on it being that way. I don't want to be the old guy saying 'We're going to show these young whippersnappers how it's done.' It was just 'Fuck, this sounds really good.'" -Billie Joe, NME

"The scary thing was when I went into the character's head, I started getting dizzy." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

Bang Bang's Lyrics

Revolution Radio:

Spoiler

Revolution Radio was inspired by Billie Joeran into a Black Lives Matter protest in New York in March 2014; and before he knew it, Armstrong had gotten out of his car and was walking up Eighth Avenue with the throng.

"I was screaming, 'Hands up, don't shoot,' I felt like I was on the right side of history. It's like something is breaking in the world. A lot of the old people are dying off and the values of the Fifties generation are starting to break and what happened in the Sixties and is starting to manifest more now than it ever has before." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

"I was just watching this controlled chaos, and it was going and happening all over the country. I was feeling that people don't want to feel obsolete in the things that we care about. That's sort of what the song is about." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone.

Revolution Radio's Lyrics

Say Goodbye:

Spoiler

Along with 'Bang Bang', the song was described by Billie Joe as a song that went "from metaphor to literal".

"I think of Flint, Michigan and how you put people in these desperate situations, where they're supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and the city government is so corrupt that they're not even trying to help. They're just trying to save their own asses. It's like, 'How do you educate people when they're starving or being poisoned?' And it's one crisis after another. It makes your head spin, really, and I think that's what the song's about". -Billie Joe, Kerrang!

"You can't educate people if they're that desperate." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stonew

The song was also inspired by the images of armored military-style vehicles in the streets of Ferguson, Missouri.

"I was like, 'What country do I live in? How is this different from the Arab Spring?'" -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

Lyrics:

"Teach your children well from the bottom of the well"

Outlaws:

Spoiler

Described as a swelling and wistful song with a "dreamy nostalgia" vibe to it and being a "multi-part punk-rock opus" that looks back at the trio's teenage punk days.

"I was feeling nostalgic. Me and Mike would break into cars and steal tapes and lighters and lighters and shit like that." -Billie Joe

The band sees it as a sequel of sorts to their 1992 track "Christie Road," which mined the same period of their lives.

The song might be one of the songs that has a "Bow Guitar" on it since Billie Joe's declarations about the song:

"I play a lot of bow guitar on the record, sort of like Jimmy Page. Everyone said, "Oh, my God, I've never really heard of someone doing that," but it was like coming up with almost like string arrangements for using a bow on songs like "Outlaws" and "Forever Now." It was really fun". - Billie Joe, Rolling Stone.

Lyrics:

"When we were outlaws, when we were forever young."

Bouncing Off the Wall:

Spoiler

It has been described as a fun song with a semi-tossed-off feel.

It was originally titled "Concrete Dream," and it was one of the last tracks to be added to the album.

Lyrics: 

"It's all that I want and I want to be free"

"Got Satan riding next to me, 'Cause we're all bloody freaks

And we'll give you the creeps, chasing fireflies and zeroes." 

Still Breathing:

Spoiler

The third single of the album. It's a song that touches on pressing social issues.

It has being described as an unsettling track with a slow-building and as personal fast ballad song that may make you believe it's about Billie Joe's recovery and about him going through drugs problems and other personal issues but he has stated that's not necessarily the case.

"I try to [be more universal than just write about my own story]. I don't wanna be selfish. [Laughs] I'd rather write something where my eyes are forward, not so much internal. I hope it makes people happy and creates a difference in some way, just by people recognizing themselves in the song." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

"It's about how people feel desperate, and just taking it day by day, especially with everything that's going on right now. Was it cathartic and helpful to put my feeling about that time down in a song? Yeah, I think so. I was pretty clear-headed throughout the process. It felt pretty good." - Billie Joe, Kerrang!

 "It goes from the life of a junkie to the life of a gambler to the life of a single mother and a soldier and how we’re all kinda intertwined." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

"That was a very heavy song, sometimes I run away from being too heavy. But sometimes it just comes out that way." The chorus, "I'm still breathing on my own" alludes to the fact that "at some point, we're all going to have to be on life support, as time goes on, your thoughts get darker." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

Still Breathing's Lyrics

Youngblood:

Spoiler

Described as a "power-pop nugget" love song about Billie Joe's wife of 22 years, Adrienne.

"She's easy to write about because she's so awesome. She's the cedar in the trees in Minnesota." -Billie Joe

It has also be described as "jubilant and victorious" and a "romantic midtempo track"

Lyrics:

"I want to hold you like a gun, We'll shoot the moon into the sun."

"Are you broken, Like I'm broken?

Are you restless? She said, "Fuck you, I'm from Oakland!""

Too Dumb to Die:

Spoiler

After a low-fi intro, the song breaks into a melody and chord progression that could've fit in on Dookie. It has been described as one of the most personal songs on the record, "straight autobiography".

"It's about growing up totally working class and not knowing what the future was going to be, and being sort of a dope-smoking kid. And then it's also a reference to my father, who was in the teamsters and watching him go out to work in the picket line. I remember my father being on strike a lot. The song is kind of like feeling like, "Is anything really changing?" -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

Lyrics:

"I was a high school atom bomb, going off on the weekends

Smoking dope and mowing lawns, and I hated all the new trends"

"I'm hanging on a dream that's too dumb to die."

Troubled Times:

Spoiler

The song was inspired by the Paris attacks of November 2015 and the rest of the terrors and chaos the world is going through in recent years.

“I don’t think anything like terrorism hit home right in our backyard the way it did that night. At first, I wrote it and thought ‘I don’t know if I want this on the album.’ It’s really heavy to write about and I didn’t want it to be trite or maudlin. But then when Orlando happened, I thought ‘Well, it makes perfect sense to put it on the record.’”-Billie Joe, Q Magazine.

It has also being described as an "ominous rocker that surveys an America on the brink of disaster, full of racial unrest and economic inequality.

"I wish saying 'we live in troubled times' was a cliché but it's not. Trump is preying on people's fears, anger and desperation. He's feeding meat to hungry dogs." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

Lyrics:

"We live in troubled times"

Forever Now:

Spoiler

The album's most ambitious track, clocking in at nearly seven minutes, described as a surging mini rock opera of sorts, melding several songs, including a reprise of opener "Somewhere Now".

"'Forever Now' brings it full circle and honestly, it's so fun to write like that, you can just be that little kid in your room and feeling like a rock god." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

"It begins with a lyric  – "My name is Billie and I'm freaking out" – that Armstrong calls "the most honest line I've ever written," and ends with the refrain "I ain't gonna stand in line no more": "It's like a slogan for a demonstration, like, I'm not going to accept the status quo or I'm not going to be manipulated. It's like, 'What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now.'"

The song began as three unrelated pieces that Armstrong jammed together: "It was really hard, but at the end, when we bring in that big chorus where everything is overlapping with each other and heading back into that riff, it was just fucking beautiful."

"I saw this song change so many times, the cool thing is that Billie didn't force anything. He just let it happen and he kept trying different shit. And then there was this one moment where he was like, 'I think I got it.'  And it was awesome. There were goosebumps in the room." -Tré Cool, Rolling Stone

The song might be one of the songs that has a "Bow Guitar" on it since Billie Joe's declarations about the song:

"I play a lot of bow guitar on the record, sort of like Jimmy Page. Everyone said, "Oh, my God, I've never really heard of someone doing that," but it was like coming up with almost like string arrangements for using a bow on songs like "Outlaws" and "Forever Now." It was really fun". - Billie Joe, Rolling Stone.

Lyrics:

"My name is Billie and I'm freaking out"

"I ain't gonna stand in line no more"

Ordinary World:

Spoiler

Ordinary World is a sweet acoustic ballad that ends the album, it was originally part of the soundtrack of the movie of the same name Ordinary World starring Billie Joe Armstrong.

"After all of the chaos that's on the album, whether it's pop culture or whatever new apps we're using, everything gets so complicated. At some point you want something simple. That's sort of what "Ordinary World" is about." -Billie Joe, Rolling Stone

The final line gives the album a happy ending: "Baby, I don't have much," Armstrong sings over acoustic strumming and a gently chiming electric guitar, "but what we have is more than enough/Ordinary world."

A little snippet of the recorded studio version can be heard in the brand new trailer for the movie. (God, I want to see it so badly)

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nice start! I feel like the info in this pic is missing from your descriptions though:

14237533_10153784222341373_2548705718453

 

also some place described Somewhere now as Who-esq

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3 minutes ago, Kyle Serlington said:

nice start! I feel like the info in this pic is missing from your descriptions though:

also some place described Somewhere now as Who-esq

Thanks! I will totally add this info to the post.

Btw, where's that from?

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the pic is from the new issue of rolling stone. the description of somewhere now might be from the same issue, i'll look it over again later

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Thanks for this man.

I have a feeling that Still Breathing is going to be the 21 Guns or Boulevard of broken dreams of this record for some reason

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I feel this record is like all their best songs put up together. Bang Bang and RevRad are both great! Somewhere Now seems like a good opener, we have bow guitar on two songs that's interesting. Still Breathing and Troubled Times looks challenging, specially the later but I'm glad they made it to the album and appreciate for bringing such topics through their songs and creating awareness.

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I think this album is really gonna be a special one since it's not only gonna be their epic comeback to the mainstream, it also has this recurrent theme of the chaos the world is going through lately and it doesn't seem forced.

According to what we know so far, this theme came up quite naturally and the songs went "from metaphor to literal" like Billie said. It seems like, just like American Idiot, this is the album the world needs to hear right now and it's not like they intended to preach and do so, they just jammed like a couple of friends do on a tiny studio without anybody knowing.

Maybe it is too soon to praise this album but so far, this era is shaping quite nicely and it seems that Revolution Radio might become a Green Day classic and the best part is that they didn't even tried to make a masterpiece or whatever but they might have just did that without even trying.

The entire background of the album (The trilogy, the fall and rise, the recording process in OTIS) is incredible, it's the perfect timing to release this kind of album and I intend to cherish this era bit by bit.

This is a special one, guys.

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I can't believe we know nothing about Bouncing Off The Wall! Intrigued about that one now :D 

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So looking forward to hearing all these songs!

They haven't made an album like this since Warning where it's not overambitious

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Somewhere Now sounds like it's going to be an epic opener like 21CB. Outlaws and Forever Now will almost certainly be multi-part songs indeed. I'm particularly interested how the latter will compare to Homecoming and American Eulogy, it being the second to last song on the album. Overall, the album bears structurally and thematically a striking resemblance to American Idiot and 21CB. Both Homecoming and Forever now are the second to last multi-part songs, preceded by songs referring to terror attacks (WMUWSE - 9/11 and Troubled Times - Paris), both 21CB and Somewhere Now are gloomy opening anthems and both records end with a more serene ballad (See the Light and Ordinary World). Combined with the familiar riffs we've heard, I think this really exemplifies how RevRad is the spiritual successor and natural evolution of both AI and 21CB.

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7 hours ago, Jake69 said:

@Stefano Bras add the lyric "I dodged a bullet and I walked across a land mine" in still breathing.

I'll add it! Where did you find that?

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8 hours ago, Dakke said:

Somewhere Now sounds like it's going to be an epic opener like 21CB. Outlaws and Forever Now will almost certainly be multi-part songs indeed. I'm particularly interested how the latter will compare to Homecoming and American Eulogy, it being the second to last song on the album. Overall, the album bears structurally and thematically a striking resemblance to American Idiot and 21CB. Both Homecoming and Forever now are the second to last multi-part songs, preceded by songs referring to terror attacks (WMUWSE - 9/11 and Troubled Times - Paris), both 21CB and Somewhere Now are gloomy opening anthems and both records end with a more serene ballad (See the Light and Ordinary World). Combined with the familiar riffs we've heard, I think this really exemplifies how RevRad is the spiritual successor and natural evolution of both AI and 21CB.

WMUWSE is not about the 9/11 attacks, that's just a lazy interpretation people did when the song just got released.

Other than that, I agree with everything you said.

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Awesome.   If I had any doubts about this album being amazing they are gone.   From this information I believe Somewhere Now, Outlaws and Still Breathing are going to be my favorites.  Being similar or inspired by The Who is always a good thing (Somewhere Now).    Outlaws just might be an old-school throwback to classic Green Day!  And Still Breathing just might bring a collective tear to our eyes.

  

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16 hours ago, Stefano Bras said:

WMUWSE is not about the 9/11 attacks, that's just a lazy interpretation people did when the song just got released.

Other than that, I agree with everything you said.

Not explicitly, but it is the 11th song on AI and it's one interpretation of the lyrics, though it is inherently about the death of his father.

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In Youngblood: 

 

I’m a rough boy
‘Round the edges
Getting drunk and falling into hedges
She’s my weakness
Fucking genius
Swear to god that I’m not even superstitious

 

 

I think Billie says "Swear to god AND I’m not even superstitious", like he's atheist and god's a superstition

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1 hour ago, gd86arg said:

In Youngblood: 

 

I’m a rough boy
‘Round the edges
Getting drunk and falling into hedges
She’s my weakness
Fucking genius
Swear to god that I’m not even superstitious

 

 

I think Billie says "Swear to god AND I’m not even superstitious", like he's atheist and god's a superstition

I think the same but if you want GDA to change the lyrics you need to contact Andres or some mod, not mention it here :lol:

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