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Jesus of Suburbia


J'net

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I just love this song :wub:

I can't even pick my favourite part. It's just... Fantastic.

And the video for it! I love how it tells the story.

Defiantly one of American Idiot's best songs.

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I remember the exact spot and moment when this first came through my car stereo. I was in florida at the time so the air was amazing outside. This song litteraly changed my life. Music is a huge, huge part in my life, and I like to think this song(all of American Idiot really) introduced me to what music really was, since all that bullshit pop crap was coming out at the time. This song is Green Days magnum opus. I just LOVE posting this song when I get into an argument about Green Day selling out. I just post it and say is this selling out? Digging into your soul and writing a fucking 9 minute rock opera?

Long live Jesus of Suburbia. I will show my kids this song.

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Long live Jesus of Suburbia. I will show my kids this song.

me too

my babies are gonna be little rock and roll kids

let's hope they don't rebel against it

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I’m really at a loss about how to describe my feelings towards this song without boring you all to death, but I’m going to give it a try.

First of all, I want to thank you, J’net :wub: for giving this song the coveted title of “Song of the Two Weeks”, I do believe that if one song deserves two weeks to be discussed, it’s this one.

I can say, without a shadow of a doubt that “Jesus of Suburbia” was the first time I got exposed to Billie Joe’s songwriting magnificence, since “American Idiot" was the album though which I discovered Green Day. Being blown away by the first listen of the rock opera, and English not being my mother language, I found myself printing an improvised lyric book from the internet and reading through the words as I listened for a second time. By the time “Jesus of Suburbia” was over, a flowing river of tears was streaming down my face.

Being born and raised in a small town in the middle of nowhere, I grew up bottling up and locking some pretty dark feelings inside me. Unbeknownst to me, scorn, anger, helplessness, loneliness, arrogance and hate were storing in a little Pandora’s Box deep into my heart. This song was the first to hit that nerve, that song gave shape to those unnamed feelings, it gave me words to describe them, and it gave me means to fight it. I was the Jesus of Suburbia; I was the son of rage and love. I was the messiah in the middle of the desert that no one saw or acknowledged, I felt like the only human being with any kind of worth and I was resentful of everyone else, people whom I considered inferior to me. That realization in the form of a song is one of the best gifts anyone has ever given me.

As to what my favorite section of it is, I have to go for “Tales of Another Broken Home”, because the way all the emotions accumulated during the song are released in this final part will never ceased to amaze me, and my favorite lyric has to be “…nobody’s perfect and I stand accused, for lack of a better word and that’s my best excuse”. Chills run down my spine every time I hear that phrase pronounced. I think it’s poetry in its highest expression.

I could pour and pour words in here describing my love and adoration for this song, but in the best interest of avoiding suicides among the GDCers who read this, I’ll just finish by saying that I consider “Jesus of Suburbia“ an hymn to everyone who at some point in their lives have felt lost, stranded, and at the mercy of the hands of fate, to each and every son or daughter of rage and love.

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THIS IS GREEN DAY ANTHEM.

Somehow this way it is, that have lots of favorite and beautiful Green Day song , but it's a separate category, unique and unrepeatable,(a little cliched but very true), this song is stands all above.... and can't be compared to other songs. :rolleyes:

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I think everyone can remember where and when they heard JoS first. For me it was actually a couple of years before I got big into Green Day, when American Idiot was first released. Most of my school was on some trip and there were only a few of us in for the day, so it was pretty easy going. We were in art class finishing some project and our teacher had left so one of my friends put on American Idiot. The album and the band were just crazy popular back then so I certainly didn't complain!

I knew the song American Idiot but when I heard this next one it sounded pretty cool. First thing I loved about it was the fact that it was 9 mins long but every transition from one song to the next was flawless. I didn't know a single thing about it but 9 minutes later I didn't want it to end.

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I've been trying to find the right words to describe the song and I think that something should be mentioned here... Some of us could probably recite this word for word : D, but I'm still going to post it because I think Billie described it perfectly... After all, he wrote the song.

Every single line that you write, you hang on every single word and you hang on every single moment. And for 'Jesus of Suburbia' when people are singing it back to you, they're not just reflecting what... the things about the song that you're wrapped up in, but also what their lives are wrapped up in, too. It's too much of an emotional moment... it's one of the most emotional moments in a song I've ever written. And that's the only way you can look at a song like that. It's like you can't sit here and look at it and say, 'Oh, this is a catchy number.' 'This is... oh, God, I'd love to dance to this song.' For a song like 'Jesus of Suburbia' there's too much emotion at stake to just simply say it like that. You don't even have to say you love that song. I don't even think that's a way to describe it. It's not about... it's about, it's about all the emotional baggage that you come with and that you are, are just... you finally have an outlet for. That's what 'Jesus of Suburbia' is to me and when it's reflected back at you by 65,000 people, it's... I don't know, it's a feeling you can't even describe.

:wub:

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Ah, Jesus Of Suburbia. I love this song. When I first bought American Idiot I wasn't really totally into Green Day yet, so I would always skip this song. Little did I know that ironically it would became one of my favorite songs ever and it would be the main song which would change my life. I don't have much patience so I always like "meh, I'll listen to it later". I mean, I would listen to the song, but I wouldn't listen to it (listen = pay complete attention to the lyrics and music). One day I decided to just lie in my bed and listen to that song. And I did. I fell in love with that song, I could relate to it so much! It perfectly described my whole life at the time. You know, feeling alone, feeling trapped in a shitty place where you don't belong, facing everyone's hypocrisy. And of course, there were many little verses that slowly started to change my whole life - this whole song turned me into someone better and it helped me to reveal my own true self.A few years ago I wasn't really myself. I didn't say all I wanted, I acted like my group of "friends" - everything to feel accepted. The verse 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 really changed me in that aspect. It really seemed like a land of make believe, because everyone was simply so fake that the whole place seemed perfect, something that wasn't real.

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, it's beating out of time. This verse always reminds me of the problems I used to have with my parents. They divorced and my dad left the house. The motto says "home is your heart is", but where the hell was my heart after all? With my dad, or here in my house with my mom? We still have the line "everyone's heart doesn't beat the same", that perfectly describes how me and my mom were always fighting after the divorce. It really seemed like our hearts were beating out of time. We eventually calmed down and stopped fighting. I think that one thing that helped me a lot was discovering that many Green Day fans could relate to these verses A LOT, and that made me think "wow, maybe I'm not alone after all".

The I don't care if you don't, I don't care if you don't care (...) everyone's so full of shit, born and raised by hypocrites brings me back to my "friends" again. I started saying what I thought, I started dressing how I wanted to - I started being myself. And they stopped caring about me. That hurt me, I won't lie. But then I thought "if they don't care about me, why should I care about them? I don't need them anyway" and JOS really helped me why that... I think that maybe if wasn't for this song I would still hang out with those people. I actually shouted "I don't care if you don't care" in their faces at one point. Like the lyrics say, they were really full of shit, and their parents would fully support it because they wanted the perfect children (born and raised by hypocrites).

The only line that can describe a little bit of my past in Dearly Beloved is probably nobody's perfect and I stand accused. My so called friends started accusing me because I wasn't trying to be perfect anymore. To hell with them. What's the point? Nobody's perfect, why would anyone spend their life trying to be perfect? It didn't make any sense to me.

Finally, the whole Tales Of Another Broken Home part means a lot to me and I can relate to it a lot, maybe even more than any other part in this song.

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

Well I didn't actually run away - but I did leave behind all those fake people. They were really like a hurricane of fucking lies, all of what they did was so fake that they didn't even seem real.

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've never apologized to them - I don't feel any shame at all! I think that they should be the ones apologizing - they were the ones who judged me when I changed. At that time I really wish I could have ran away from this town, but now I'm glad I didn't because I have found some AMAZING people who aren't fake at all, they're the best.

My point is, this song has a huge meaning to me. If it wasn't for this song, I wouldn't have the guts to face my "friends" and start being myself. This song gave me strength, because if Jesus had the courage to leave his city to find what he believed in, why couldn't I have the courage to sat goodbye to that people? Also, seeing all those people in concert singing these lyrics out loud with emotion made me realize I wasn't alone. I wish I could thank Green Day for this song - seriously. It has made a huge change in my life.

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it's like this song just came out of nowhere, out of thin air

as if a pure feeling deep down inside of Billie just burst out and turned into words

this isn't an ordinary song with music and lyrics

this is purely memories, feelings, emotions, transfigured into sound and language

This, exactly. There's really no other way to describe it.

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Best. Song. Ever.

This is song is pure rage and love. It's not just another Green Day song, it IS Green Day.

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Hearing the song acapella really makes you appreciate how good Billie's voice really is.

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definitely one of my favorite songs.

didn't this win the best green day song ever here in gdc? :bunny:

Yes, it did :happy: Didn't surprise me though :lol:

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CHOON.

I remember the first time I heard this song, I didn't even realise Green Day had a new album out and I was at my friend's house and she asked if I'd heard of this new band called GD and I was like umm yeah they're pretty old and then she played me this song and uhh yeah, that moment's stuck with me for some reason :lol: Must have been pretty blown away by this song I guess. Though it is like 1000x better live, for sure.

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My Chemical Romance said JoS was a heavy influence on their song Welcome to the Black Parade too. Always cool to hear GD influencing other bands.

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I got no words to say how amazing this song is! One of the best songs from American Idiot!

I can play most of it on guitar :dance:

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My favorite song :wub:

I'll probably come back later when I'm not lazy to write something worthy of this song :wub:

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I always thought that Billie pulled someone up on stage to do the guitar because he got bored of it or because he got tired of playing 9 mins of non stop guitar. Probably not true but a lot of thoughts wander through this head of mine!

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I am absolutely loving this thread already. I'm just reading everything and going "yeah, exactly!" all the time. Such an epic song.

I always thought that Billie pulled someone up on stage to do the guitar because he got bored of it or because he got tired of playing 9 mins of non stop guitar. Probably not true but a lot of thoughts wander through his head of mine!

which one of the two? :lol:

I never really thought about that, though.

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Ohhh...where should I start with this one...well I started being a Green Day fan in 2006 so when I first heard AI all the way through, that was the ONE song that blew my mind!! I remeber that I was just lying there in my bed and I was so in awe of what I just heard at that time I couldnt believe it. I listened to it again and again and again. I started to translate the lyrics and all that and its insane how fitting this song is to my life and generally me. Its even freaking me out a bit how Billie can express MY feelings so fitting in those lyrics or in that song...I mean its like he could see right into my head and mind! Its such an INCREDIBLE song...I have no words for it and seriously the video for it is just klsjdgf...sorry I REALLY REALLY have no words for that. Its literally INDISCRIBABLE....Its made me cry the first time I saw it...not because it was so moving or sad, but more because I was so overwhelmed by what I just saw and about the perfection of that video...the whole atmosphere it creates...It still gives me goosebumps everytime I see it and Im over and over filled with emotions...I'm so sorry I really dont know how to express my feelings for that song.....It will always remain as one of the most meaningful songs ever to me.

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For some reason, this is still my favorite GD video even though the guys arent even really in it. I remember when the channels were playing it all the time back in late 2005. It was just a few days after I had gotten into the band when they started airing the video and it totally impressed me. The actors, the story of the video...I guess I was in my sort of rebellious phase at that time when I didn't care about anything so it just fitted very well to my life at this point. I love the whole vibe to the video, the style of the actors etc. It actually inspired me to start working on this project I'm still working on. And probably will for the rest of my life because I'm a lazy ass :lol:

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