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03 - Revolution Radio


Second favourite son

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I'm extremely excited now. I like the bridge and the chorus of bang bang, but I really like every part of this one

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1 hour ago, Bakabanas said:

I can't wait to listen to this song drunk :D 

I can't wait to hear it live in 11 days in St. Louis.

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One thing that bothered me about the trilogy was that after listening to all the songs, it felt like none of the songs were exceptional or very memorable and it felt like I'd almost kind of forget about them. RevRad and Bang Bang are the opposite imo though. They both have great lyrics and are exceptional musically which makes me even more excited for this album. 

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2 hours ago, Scattered Wreck said:

I am not black, but not being black does not mean you are not invested in movement

But are you invested enough where you can say with utmost certainty that this song perfectly encapsulates the BLM  movement? Because it feels like saying such a thing is a pretty gross generalization. There's nothing in the song that actually delves into the group's plight or their reasoning for why they do what they do. 

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I only now realize it's 'legalize the truth' and not 'we call lies the truth'. Not a world of a difference, but more interesting in my opinion.

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2 hours ago, Scattered Wreck said:

Maybe if you stopped trying to be brash and trendy you would see that there are plenty of intelligent conversation to be had on this forum because people would be more willing to engage you in that conversation.  No one wants to have a conversation with someone they continually feel they need to fight. 

Why does a rallying cry need to be subtle?  Wouldn't it make more sense to reach the masses if it wasn't?

Why does it need to bring a unique perspective?  Having a unique perspective does not mean that it is not hollow, nor does not having a unique perspective mean that it is hollow.  Often, it can rally a subject matter if someone just states what most people are already thinking.  It gives people comfort and makes them more likely to take a stand if they know that someone they admire feels the same way they do.  

Also, if you want people to rally about a subject, you need to make as many as possible aware of it.  Therefore, you want to make it as mainstream as possible to reach the largest audience.   So I disagree that that is counterproductive to a song like Revolution Radio, I will argue that it is the purpose.   

Now whether Billie accomplished that in these lyrics is subjective.  I think he did, you did not.  That is perfectly fine.    

You're free to feel however you want to feel. I personally feel that lyrically the song is so vague and sloppily written that it'll undoubtedly get lost in the thousands of other rally songs written in the past. It's nothing new. It doesn't feel gritty, it doesn't feel like it truly reflects the times. The entire track feels like a passive observation.

Hell, even musically the song doesn't reflect what it's attempting to get at. It's too clean and poppy (and I'm not saying I'm against those characteristics generally, but given the subject matter, it doesn't really feel appropriate). 

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1 minute ago, CrimsonArk said:

But are you invested enough where you can say with utmost certainty that this song perfectly encapsulates the BLM  movement? Because it feels like saying such a thing is a pretty gross generalization. There's nothing in the song that actually delves into the group's plight or their reasoning for why they do what they do. 

I can see how the way I stated it it sounds like an exaggeration.   I guess what I should have said was that I thought he captured clearly captured one of the motives for the song.  The first verse is really the one that stood out to me that he was talking about BLM.  I do think it captures why BLM was created.  Does it offer any insights on how to fix the issues, no it does not.  But it can bring attention to the movement.     

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11 minutes ago, CrimsonArk said:

Hell, even musically the song doesn't reflect what it's attempting to get at. It's too clean and poppy (and I'm not saying I'm against those characteristics generally, but given the subject matter, it doesn't really feel appropriate). 

I think delivering serious/dark lyrics in catchy/poppy songs is kind of Green Day's speciality. I don't think it takes away from the seriousness, I think it's a deliberate, ironic contrast that can actually help to emphasize it. 

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7 minutes ago, CrimsonArk said:

You're free to feel however you want to feel. I personally feel that lyrically the song is so vague and sloppily written that it'll undoubtedly get lost in the thousands of other rally songs written in the past. It's nothing new. It doesn't feel gritty, it doesn't feel like it truly reflects the times. The entire track feels like a passive observation.

Hell, even musically the song doesn't reflect what it's attempting to get at. It's too clean and poppy (and I'm not saying I'm against those characteristics generally, but given the subject matter, it doesn't really feel appropriate). 

I do agree with you on the musically part.  I think it is definitely more poppish than Bang Bang and doesn't quite fit the theme.  Teh song would have been better with an angrier musical tone, such as BAng Bang.  I think this song might do better chart wise, because it has more cross over appeal.  But overall, I do feel Bang Bang is a far superior song.      

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I just can't stop listening to this song.
I think its certainly more catchy than Bang Bang. Guess thats kinda obvious.
And thats something GD has been doing in various tracks from the last records.
Really looking forward to the media reception, for now, well, its too soon.
I sincerely think is going to do very well.
 

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22 minutes ago, Hermione said:

I think delivering serious/dark lyrics in catchy/poppy songs is kind of Green Day's speciality. I don't think it takes away from the seriousness, I think it's a deliberate, ironic contrast that can actually help to emphasize it. 

I personally disagree, especially with Billie's comment about wanting to destroy Pop Punk, and the talks of how in your face the album is supposed to feel. It feels like a fairly standard Pop Punk track in my opinion. 

To put my feelings better into perspective, the song, to me, feels like a millionaire looking out of his window at a protest going on outside and thinking "I'm rooting for you guys", rather than actively being in the crowd, participating in the thick of it. 

It doesn't feel like a rally that's one for The People. It feels like a rally for the people who are passive aggressive to the issues at large. The kind who like to say they dont like the way the world is, but never actually do anything to change it.

19 minutes ago, Scattered Wreck said:

I do agree with you on the musically part.  I think it is definitely more poppish than Bang Bang and doesn't quite fit the theme.  Teh song would have been better with an angrier musical tone, such as BAng Bang.  I think this song might do better chart wise, because it has more cross over appeal.  But overall, I do feel Bang Bang is a far superior song.      

I agree. Honestly, I feel like the subject matter of the two songs should almost be switched due to their instrumentals lol

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2 minutes ago, CrimsonArk said:

I personally disagree, especially with Billie's comment about wanting to destroy Pop Punk, and the talks of how in your face the album is supposed to feel. It feels like a fairly standard Pop Punk track in my opinion. 

To put my feelings better into perspective, the song, to me, feels like a millionaire looking out of his window at a protest going on outside and thinking "I'm rooting for you guys", rather actively being in the crowd, participating in the thick of it. 

It doesn't feel like a rally that's one for The People. It feels like a rally for the people who are passive aggressive to the issues at large. The kind who like to say they dont like the way the world is, but never actually do anything To change it.

I can actually understand how you feel this way.  I'm not sure that I completely agree, but I definitely understand how you came to that conclusion.  What you have stated is one of the things that has always bothered me about how Billie handles his politics.

You have me thinking my friend.  I need to listen some more. 

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Definitely a step in the right direction to me, but it doesn't have that same spark that made Bang Bang such a special moment for me.

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I think the lyrics and the song in its entirety are a perfect anthem for any protest march. And I don't think the lyrics are vague, actually they're pretty direct, every verse casts an image to to my mind when I'm listening to the song. Then obviously there are margin of interpretation, it's a song not a newspaper article, but from a certain point of view RR is much more direct than Bang Bang. These two songs have a completely different lyrical style... maybe it's a risky comparison but I would say that RR is a Banksy murales, BB a Picasso painting, if you know what I mean :D 

About the too much "clean and poppy" music, compared to the theme... Punk Rock has always used "softer sounds" in order to relate with complex political issues. Just think about Rock the casbah. 

I think Bang Bang is a better song, musically speaking, but I love RR too, it's an amazing anthem. Actually I'm really confused, they're both such beautiful tracks, I really don't know which one I prefer :D 

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2 minutes ago, CrimsonArk said:

I personally disagree, especially with Billie's comment about wanting to destroy Pop Punk, and the talks of how in your face the album is supposed to feel. It feels like a fairly standard Pop Punk track in my opinion. 

To put my feelings better into perspective, the song, to me, feels like a millionaire looking out of his window at a protest going on outside and thinking "I'm rooting for you guys", rather actively being in the crowd, participating in the thick of it. 

It doesn't feel like a rally that's one for The People. It feels like a rally for the people who are passive aggressive to the issues at large. The kind who like to say they dont like the way the world is, but never actually do anything To change it.

He said "destroy the phrase pop punk" as far as we know not even in relation to the new album (he randomly tweeted it around new years, before they were talking about it). He might've just meant he doesn't like the phrase, can't really take it as any kind of promise about new music.

I guess that's where it becomes a matter of opinion on whether they got across what they wanted to get across with the song. To me it does sound like a rallying cry, but I think there's room both for "rallying cry" songs that get into the specifics of an issue and "rallying cry" songs that express a more general feeling of concern. As the title track I'm not surprised this is more the latter, there's the whole rest of the album to get into the details. But even if it doesn't, who said he can't just express his own feelings about the situation being messed up without offering a solution (which he might not have!)? He hasn't signed up to lead a movement, he's a musician expressing his thoughts through music.

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10 minutes ago, Hermione said:

He said "destroy the phrase pop punk" as far as we know not even in relation to the new album (he randomly tweeted it around new years, before they were talking about it). He might've just meant he doesn't like the phrase, can't really take it as any kind of promise about new music.

I guess that's where it becomes a matter of opinion on whether they got across what they wanted to get across with the song. To me it does sound like a rallying cry, but I think there's room both for "rallying cry" songs that get into the specifics of an issue and "rallying cry" songs that express a more general feeling of concern. As the title track I'm not surprised this is more the latter, there's the whole rest of the album to get into the details. But even if it doesn't, who said he can't just express his own feelings about the situation being messed up without offering a solution (which he might not have!)? He hasn't signed up to lead a movement, he's a musician expressing his thoughts through music.

I'm not saying he doesn't have the right, of course he does, but he opens himself up to criticism by delving into such subject matter. 

It's like I said before, I feel like Billie excels more at writing songs that deal with his personal life-experiences than he does writing political ones. His writing, politically wise, is usually never fresh nor nuanced. 

Compare X-Kid's lyrics to 99 Revolutions.

Or JoS to American Idiot.

Or Last of The American Girls to American Eulogy/21 Guns. 

The former tend to feel more earnest and genuine, like he fully understands what he's talking about. He expresses himself better and tends to use more colorful, varied language. 

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I'm not pointing fingers at anyone here per se but I'm bugged by how many people are complaining that these songs are similar to other songs by them in terms of chord progression. There's only so many power chords out there guys and it's a band with punk roots. 

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9 minutes ago, CrimsonArk said:

I'm not saying he doesn't have the right, of course he does, but he opens himself up to criticism by delving into such subject matter. 

I agree. I just don't share your opinion that there's something wrong with how he handled the subject matter.

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I know I am late to the party, like 25 pages late, but I finally got a chance to listen to the song a few times and form an opinion. While I do enjoy the song, I am glad that it was not the lead single. It has some positives to it, but it just feels like another generic Green Day song to me. When Bang Bang first came out, I listened to only that song for about 3 days in a row, and I still listen to it everyday. Revolution Radio, on the other hand, has bored me already, and I have only listened to it about 10 times. 

Again, not a bad song at all, but if this was the first song I heard from the album, I would not be as excited as I am.

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