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I think that's the point of the song. It should not be something you relate to, it should shock you. I also think the lyrics can be seen as sarcastic and a dig at the media. The media are making celebrities out of mass shooters. All it takes to gain celebrity status now is a mass shooting. The media will swarm all over it and the picture of the mass shooter will be everywhere, tv, Twitter, Facebook Instagram etc. The mass shooter is the man of the moment, "the hero of the hour". Without the mass shooter these 24hr news stations have nothing to report. He/she is the hero for the media. There is little to no difference these days between being famous or being infamous.

I'm really digging the "I want to be a celebrity martyr" bit.

"I've got a fever for violent behaviour" this line in the video is accompanied by an image of a guitar being smashed off the ground. Its like a recreation of Billie smashing his guitar at iheart radio performance

Wanting anyone but Billie to sing is just plain silly. I am teasing, but in all seriousness, I think Billie is one of the best front men in rock and specifically one of the best singers. He has worked very hard on his vocal abilities. He has clearly taken lessons and is one of the few singers who's vocal ability has increased as he has gotten older. He puts so much emotion into his singing that you can really feel the song. To me, having anyone else sing a GD song is a waste. I think Mike and Jason, Mike particularly are fantastic back up singers, but just my opinion, I dont' feel the need to hear them sing lead.

Right ! But it sounds even more like "Light of a silhouette, He's insubordinate" from St. Jimmy to me.

They knew exactly what they were posting the whole way along - which is amazing after watching how technologically challenged they were in the live facebooking😛

Ok, a personal comment on the lyrics, sorry if it's too long but I have these thoughts I need to share them. I understand why you'll skip this, don't worry . So, I honestly believe this is one of the best Billie's work so far, and I'll try to explain why. I think the best Green Day's tracks, from a lyrics point of view, are those that are capable to create a connection with world and the time where they're born, and I believe every Green Day album has at least some of these songs. From the 90's records, immersed in that decade, apparently idyllic, light hearted but still drowned by contradictions and rage, passing by Warning and that pre-9/11 intake of conscience. And arriving to the 00's albums, with the mass hysteria, the fear, the homologation, with people understanding that the dream sold during the previous twenty years was mostly an unfulfilled and unfulfillable promise. In my opinion even the Trilogy somehow follows this path, and not thanks to the only political track, but indeed for the desire of escape from reality, the desire of something that is gone and will never come back, and that eventually brings you down, which I think surrounds the three records. Now, this is just one song, I know, but I think that until now, in this decade, we missed a track capable to create this kind of real connection with the contemporarity surrounding us. Listening to the song over and over again, reading that lyrics, at some certain point I got chills. Because I understand again what Billie is talking about, through that fictional mind, and is something scary, beautiful and deep at the same time. Something that for a US guy and of course even for Billie is directly connected with the sad mass shooting tradition that affects your country. For a 24 years old boy from Europe is inevitably related to the season of terror that is surrounding us since years. Listening to that song it's for me impossible to don't think about the Bataclan, Nice, Charlie Ebdo and sadly so on and so on. I study strategy and security issues and believe me, during the umpteenth reproduction of Bang Bang I stopped the song and I thought "Fuck, he's describing the sick mind of those assholes, from their point of view, better than most of these genii on TV". Until now I've not been able to think and rationalize this events, the time that is surrounding me, through music, dancing, singing, moshing. Thanks to this song now I can do that, and it's beautiful. And it's again that almost unique Billie's ability, that he owns since 39/Smooth: to write songs charged with social meanings and still be able to let them interiorize by crowds with very different backgrounds. Yes, I fucking love this song.

Okay. Initial reactions to all of this are A) th DJ that said this sounds like Dookie is definitely on crack. Insomniac maybe, but Dookie?! O.o B) This track is amazeballs, and I can't get enough of it; C) that lyric video is mindblowingly awesome and should be the official one. They don't need anything else. Now to respon to some other stuff.... I agree. I found them far less noticeable on the digital copy, but the FB version makes it sound way too distorted for my taste, and I had the same fear as you that the whole album might sound that way haha. Welcome to Green Day fandom It's been that way forever (though, really, just about any comment section is going to be dominated by haters than fans, no matter what it is). What's even better is when you start to get the biased journos attempting to write articles and reviews lolwut The funny thing about this is that Green Day's albums really aren't that explicit to begin with. American Idiot, for instance, really has very few actual swear words on it, if you go back and comb through it. Most of the content that does get flagged has less to do with actual swearing and more to do with other aspects of content like sexual references/innuendos, drugs, and violence, which are all frequently censored on the radio these days, as thatdude03 said (the clip of St. Jimmy from BIAB that used to circulate on MTV, for instance, always had "zipgun" and "dope" and "gun" bleeped out of it, for instance). On that note, I actually am surprised they were able to release this song to radio at all without it being heavily censored, though perhaps that's why Billie took the approach he did in writing it, rather than approaching the subject of gun violence directly. "B**g B**g" That being said, unlike video game, movie, and TV ratings, which are all determined by a review board, the parental advisory labels on music--and whether a "clean" version is made available as an alternative--are determined solely by the artist and their management. As a result, there are plenty of songs with PALs that are otherwise fairly clean, in terms of swearing, and plenty of songs with no PALs that do contain explicit content. In point of fact, none of Green Day's (physical) albums prior to American Idiot had PALs on them. Not even Nimrod. And I'm quite sure that Platypus has more swearing in it than all of AI combined What a big surprise I liked the first post because I agree with you about Billie's abilties as a frontman and a vocalist, much less as a guitarist and songwriter. But I disagree with you vehemently on everything else. Obviously, Billie is a more versatile singer than the other guys, and replacing him permanently as the vocalist for the group would be unthinkable, but I don't see the problem with having Mike, Tre, and/or Jason sing the occasional song or parts of songs, as they have in the past. Shit, Freddie Mercury is one of the best rock vocalists and frontmen of all time, and even he didn't sing lead on ALL of Queen's songs. Yet i don't see anyone claiming that Brian, John, and Roger's songs were "wastes of time". That's just freakin' ludicrous. Not to mention insulting. And if Mr. Bulsara can afford to yield the floor to his bandmates, Mr. Armstrong (who is nowhere near in the same league) most certainly can too. And as for your assertion that American Idiot could've been written without Mike: that is just patently false. Without Mike, there is no Green Day, period. Much less any particular album.

Yeah, the animations are the kind of thing that Terry Gilliam used to love doing. Especially that bear. Still trying to figure out what the hell it's doing in there. If you're into the folk artist Passenger (yeah, my tastes are pretty eclectic!) he's got this great lyric in his song "27" that goes "I write songs that come from the heart, I don't give a fuck if they get to the chart or not". At this point Green Day doesn't have anything to prove. They finally shipped an aggressive, potent leadoff single that's perfectly mic'd, perfectly performed, and perfectly produced, without all the fucking studio makeup they overused on Breakdown and the Trilogy. They're like "you newcomers watch and learn what a bunch of raw fucking guitars and a kick-ass rhythm section will do for a song" and they're entitled to that this time. It'll play reasonably well on alternative rock stations I think, but is it in the same class of catchy pop-punk that sent Dookie through the stratosphere? Probably not, and I couldn't care less.

Oh trust me, you're not the only one. Sure, it's not exactly what I expected in terms of structure but who needs a chorus when there is just so much melodic craziness packed into such a short time... and fuck.. the drum solo, yet another thing I somehow haven't mentioned yet. Fucking awesome. I hope that little solo is extended live.

Does anything make you happy?

I love "oh baby baby this is viva vendetta". First because it makes the song like a sequel to Peacemaker (which I suppose it is really), and second because of the last time they used the phrase "oh baby baby..."

Blink-182, Weezer, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, to name a few, have their singles playing on the radio and at the first listen they seemed alright. After a while these songs eventually grew on me. It feels like this has been the case for a lot of the songs I have been hearing on the radio lately. Fast forward to a few seconds before Aug 11th 7am PDT when all of us are waiting with excitement for the single to come out. We were talking in the group chat, viewing the topic for the song, and listening to a live streams (a non-US one might I add) for any hints of the new song. @Andres had sent us a Spotify link to us in the chat and I was thinking "here we go". I pressed play and had no clue what was coming next since I tried my best to avoid reading any comments about the song. The moment the intro started I already knew I was hooked. The face paced guitars and drums took me back to the pace of St. Jimmy. Hell yeah, a fast first single. Then you have the catchy hurrahs and the chorus. Aspects of 21st Century Breakdown returns in the bridge of the song. Lastly, that drum fill from Mr. Tré Cool. All these different elements packed into this song. It's great. Welcome back Green Day. This single leaves me thinking, if this is the first single off of the album, I cannot wait to hear the rest of the album.

Has anyone else noticed Billies pouts?

I assume it's a reference to AI and the political themes of that album which are just as relevant in 2016 (see Billie's comments about people feeling like they're obsolete and discarded in RS). I think it also pertains to the theme of Revolution Radio.

I'm struggling to think of a Green Day song with better sounding drums. A good drum tone was something I was really hoping for from this song, but I wasn't expecting it because, in my opinion, it's been the thing most lacking on their past albums. I've been very pleasantly surprised.

i've had it on repeat since it was released. not even kidding, i listen to it at every opportunity i get.

Yeah, as I've said before on this forum, I get a faint Offspring vibe off parts of "Bang Bang", mainly the opening riffs and the Middle-Eastern-sounding bridge.

It's definitely (in my opinion) a punker 21st Century Breakdown sound.

& we all shout Hoorah Hoorah

All I can think of its ripe for a Billie dance. Can't wait.

I don't know about anyone else but I think it is catchy as hell.

True! The vocals do seem muffled. I guess they wanted to focus on the music for this song at least? And made a kickass lyric video because they knew it was hard to hear Btw, speaking of the lyric video, isn't there a bit in it that looks exactly like your avatar???!

Let me take back anything critical I said about this. I finally was able to blast it properly and all my doubt is gone. The raw sound is all I ever wanted from them and the lyrics surely improved too. And it's good to hear them changing up the song structure a bit as well.

I get the argument that it's cheesy but I still love Last Night on Earth, I think it's beautiful.

^^ You do realise that was intentional, to give the song that ¡Bang! start effect and kick you in the face

I know fuck all about Eminem

Maybe this album will be the closest we'll get to another Insomniac... Fingers crossed!

I woke up with Bang Bang stucked in my head, I think it's a very good sign

In theory I know the words, but it's too fast for me to remember them and sing them at the same time I'll get there though

Some new thoughts after some time to process: - I think what makes this song so much more exciting than anything from the Trilogy is that it is unpredictable. In the Trilogy, you knew what you were going to get in terms of structure and sound. The songs didn't really change pace throughout or throw cool instrumental pieces within, and the bridges were pretty basic. Once you heard the verse and chorus, that was it. Bang Bang is really diverse in that respect. The opening is a cool bassline and radio stream, the intro is fast, then slows down with drums and verse riff for a few measures. There's not ever a true chorus honestly, which I think is cool. Then the bridge is different too, drums solo, etc. All these changes keep you interested throughout the whole song for what will be next, and they give the chorus more punch when it's repeated twice in the end. - I still don't like Billie's vocal filters. Maybe it's just for this song (because it does fit the song), but the filters seem to have a lot of feedback. They feel "tin canny" like 21CB; a little muffled and holding back the power. I guess we'll see. Maybe Billie's voice is just different now and we won't get that Dookie/Nimrod/Warning/AI snarl again. - I've seen a lot of criticism of the lyrics online. For the most part I like them. Some of the lyrics do seem a bit forced and disjointed (similar to how I thought some lyrics on 21CB seemed this way), but it sort of fits the song bc it's from the mind of a shooter. Again, we will see.

This needs to be the opening song on the tour. I can just picture the radio part as the lights are off, and Mike and Tre and Jason start playing the intro, and when it kicks in Billie runs out with a mic and sings the song without his guitar on (which he usually does for songs this fast). Could be a big explosion and stuff too

Hello all! I used to be around GDC a bit during the trilogy, but forgot my account info by 2015, made this one, and I guess never really posted anything :/ but bang bang has gotten me so pumped up that I had to come back to these threads. I personally think it's exactly what Green Day needed in a comeback effort. It has the energy of earlier efforts like insomniac, but it definitely feels more modern and like a continued evolution of their sound off of 21CB and even better parts of the trilogy (the harmonies and just general structure of the song feel pretty unique to me, as far as a green day song goes). The lyrics are excellent, the guitars sound powerful and tre absolutely kicks ass on this track. Needless to say, I'm hyped for Revolution Radio, and I believe the bunch are ready to put out one hell of an album

Bang Bang , give me fame Shoot me up to entertain I am the son of a bitch And Edgar Allan Poe

More specifically it's Pinhead Gunpowder

I just keep hearing BANG BANG on the radio! This last time the radio station was discussing a text they had gotten from someone who was apparently upset because the song is about a shooter. I wonder if this album will be controversial and offend people. I hope it is, and that it does.

I want a BANG BANG t-shirt.

Billie has never been known for his grammatical prowess Also, the Daddy's little psycho and Mommy's little soldier might actually be a reference to Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter. I've already said this but his father left because he could not deal with him or his mother and his mother taught him to shoot.

Bang Bang is the only thing I can listen to right now. I had it on repeat at work, and around lunchtime I thought 'perhaps I should play something else' but I literally didn't want to listen to anything else. I still don't.

This is pretty cool... The 404 Show, a podcast on CNET, began their show with a good talk about Green Day and "Bang Bang." The hosts quickly reflected on their past experiences with the band and when they got in to them. The hosts mentioned they really haven't paid much attention to the band the past decade or so but they are in love with the new song. I just thought it was pretty neat that the song was brought up on a pop culture show and that the hosts, who admittedly haven't listened to them much recently, are digging it. http://www.cnet.com/news/the-404-show-1672-suicide-squad-no-mans-sky-green-day-tech-support-scammers-podcast/

It's really hit a great spot there, because, while it isn't 'radio friendly', it also isn't full of expletives, so it can justifiably be played in all its glory on radio.

This song really is so dark, with those clips at the beginning (couldn't make them out properly until I listened on headphones earlier) and Billie actually singing from the POV of the shooter, like holy shit. And that contrasted with the catchy melody and "hurrah" and fun little phrases just adds to it. Classic Green Day combo of dark subject matter and catchy tune but it seems more extreme than ever. So impressed with it!

Sorry, I couldn't resist

I don't understand the hate ¡Dos! gets. It's my favorite from the trilogy.

it's been a while i'v been on here, so i forgot the PW of my old account. anyway, i wanted to add something to the common interpretations of the lyrics. kinda long post, but here you go. while the mass shooter theme is obvious (although there are people on youtube and facebook not getting it at all, however that is possible), i think it has more meaning than that. first of all there is the critique of media making those shooters heroes. it's been talked about on here. but another one hasn't been touched. billie joe hints it in the RS interview. billie links mass shooting to the youtube vlog generation ("Broadcasting from my room/ And playing with my toys") where people are making a fortune by a new way of dumbing down young people. ("you're dead (dead mind), i'm well fed (making money))". how does this relate to mass shootings? you can't look away from the context in which mass shootings happen. if you take elliot rodger (the guy who killed people and rationalized it with rejection by girls - it was his rationalization, not the reason. that is important.), he was like a twisted version of modern american mass culture. things that mattered to him: sex, good looks, status symbols, money, approval. his mental issues in combination with his upbringing didn't allow him to process or filter those ideals. he was basically a distorted version of millions of young people, longing for their superfical and narcistic satisfaction of their manipulated needs. several lines have this double meaning, e.g.: "I want to be a celebrity martyr/ The leading man in my own private drama". talk about "narcistic social media"... it's represented here, too. young people growing up and want nothing more than to be famous. because this is what they believe to be important, fed to them by social- and mass media. mass shootings are obviously not the norm when it comes to this wish of fame ("Bang bang!Gimme fame!"). but they all want to be "like the soldiers on the screen" - in case of the mass shooters the literal soldiers, but also those social media soldiers on the screen, influencing the thoughts of millions of young kids. "the heroe of the hour". so what we see is people sharing their whole lifes on facebook and instagram, so they can simulate to be "the leading man" in their "own private drama"... giving them a feeling of fame, too, so that they are like their heroes, while being nothing more than "semi-automatic lonely boy(s)". whis is the best line for me. the link from mass shooting (semi-automatic weapon) to the minds of a generation - brilliant: semi automatic here is also referring to the dependency and addiction to modern technology that is occupying the minds of millions of kids out there, making them often seem like people without individuality, zombie like - or "semi-automatic". of course this is not the obvious and main theme in the lyrics. but it is in there. just read the chorus with this interpretation in mind. what makes the lyrics so great is, that it has this double or even tripple meaning in many lines, of topics that are interconnected with each other. and this interconnection is where the social commentary and critique comes in, while the lyrics seem to be more descriptive of the thoughts of a mass shooter at first. the great video underlines that. (Bang bang!) (Gimme fame!) Shoot me up to entertain I am a semi-automatic lonely boy (You're dead!) (I'm well fed!) Give me death or give me head Broadcasting from my room And playing with my toys I want to be a celebrity martyr The leading man in my own private drama Hurrah! Hurrah! The hero of the hour Daddy's little psycho And mommy's little soldier

Yeah man, I fully agree with your whole story. I was just listening to the song again and going through the lyrics and out of nowhere suddenly I get this sudden shiver and teary eyes. It's just freaking me out but giving me a sense of being able to find some kind of peace in it as well. I will never understand why people would ever do such a horrific thing, but it sure is crazy that the media turn those events in a wicked entertainment for the viewers. Those two things make the lyrics very strong for me. It's like gunshots being fired