Michael's Number Ones: "Holiday" by Green Day

Michael Trimboli
Aug 21
6 min read

DATE	WEEKS
March 12, 2005	7

The relevance of American Idiot over the last 20 years is that the idea of the United States as a global superpower is largely fiction. It's why our military can spend years fighting in foreign countries without making anyone safer; why banks can defraud customers and be rewarded for it; or why anyone with enough cash can steer elections the way they want. But the worst part of that thesis is that many Americans either don't know how to fix it, or don't mind what's going on. We're perpetually living on holiday.

Only two of the thirteen tracks on American Idiot are overtly political. The title track laid the groundwork for the rest of the album, calling out those who favor being ignorant of what living in America really means. "Holiday" is an even more pointed response to what was happening in America in the mid-2000s. It still fits within the story of American Idiot, but for me it struck a nerve. It distilled everything I thought was going wrong with the world at the time. At the same time, it's an absolute banger, required listening any time it came on the radio then or now. I guess for almost 4 minutes at a time, I live on holiday too.

"Holiday" is the third track on American Idiot, right after the epic track establishing the album's main character, "Jesus of Suburbia". In the album's story, "Holiday" is Jesus rebelling against his staid and conservative hometown, moving to the big city to be with people more like him and actually feel like he's living life. That's something you'd only get within the context of the album. It's also intentional that "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" immediately follows it. That song represents the comedown Jesus experiences after the hedonism of "Holiday".

When the album was put on Spotify, "Holiday" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" were infuriatingly mashed together as one track. If you wanted to listen to either song by itself, you had to go off a greatest hits album. That version of the album is strange in both its combining of separate songs and adding three bonus tracks that didn't appear on the CD. Last year Green Day finally rectified this with the 20th anniversary edition of the album.

Billie Joe Armstrong reportedly took two months to write the song to get the lyrics the way he wanted them. "Holiday" leans much harder into political and anti-war commentary than "American Idiot" did. Right away, the world feels like it's literally falling apart. "Hear the sound of falling rain/Coming down like an armageddon flame." The country is at war, but with nameless soldiers dying in vain for a cause that seems futile.

More broadly, Armstrong calls out the fever that gripped America in the wake of 9/11. He observes "another protester has crossed the line/to find the money's on the other side." Of course, this calls out the corporations who wrapped themselves in patriotism after 9/11 and were too cowardly to allow anyone representing them to voice an opinion against the buildup to the war in Iraq. In another sense, it predicts how corporations and super PACs would come to have enormous influence over elections, thanks to the Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.

When Armstrong declares, "the representative from California has the floor", it feels like a volcano about to release all its pressure. It's a masterclass in expressing how a lot of people were feeling toward the Bush administration at the time. "Pulverize the Eiffel Towers/Who criticize your government/Bang bang goes the broken glass, and/Kill all the fags that don't agree". The imagery of destroying a Paris landmark because of France's opposition to the invasion, which itself was precipated by the destruction of the Twin Towers, feels wickedly effective. France became a flashpoint in the culture wars raging in the United States, with the House of Representatives going as far as renaming French fries to “freedom fries” in their cafeteria. More broadly, being anti-war was framed by conservatives in the same way as being pro-choice or in favor of gay rights was by them, as something out of step with American values, and thus un-American.

Unfortunately, some Democrats didn’t want to be seen as “fags that don’t agree” and voted to approve the invasion. Among them were Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Barack Obama would win the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 against those two largely because of his unequivocal opposition to the Iraq War. But even Obama couldn’t make the Clintons and Bidens of the party irrelevant to politics going forward (granted, it didn’t help that they were Secretary of State and Vice President, respectively, in his administration). Thus, we got presidential candidacies from them nobody was really asking for, and why we still get dinosaurs like Andrew Cuomo thinking they should be elected mayor of New York.

While I think the lyrics to “Holiday” are the best part, Armstrong’s guitars and Tre Cool’s drums give the song a desperate urgency that sells the message. And when Armstrong has his “representative from California” speech, Mike Dirnt’s bassline gives the song room to breathe, at least enough that Bille Joe can suck the oxygen back.

The music video for “Holiday” acts as a prologue for “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, both of which were directed by prolific video director Samuel Bayer. In “Boulevard”, the Green Day guys are in a convertible that breaks down in the desert, and they then wander forlornly through a town. In “Holiday” we see them driving in that convertible at breakneck speed through a city. Later, we get a party scene in which the guys do their best Foo Fighters impression and play every character there. I love the rear projection behind the standard movie studio convertible, basically screaming out the artifice of the whole situation. When the car finally breaks down, that’s when the hangover, and thus reality, begins.

I don’t know if I’d call “Holiday” my favorite track off American Idiot, but it was easily the most successful on my chart. In addition to the seven weeks it spent at the top, it spent a total of 46 weeks on the top 40, basically spending the whole of 2005 in my consciousness. It wound up denying The Killers a second straight year-end number one with “Mr. Brightside”. Nationally, it wasn’t as big a hit as “Boulevard”, but it was still a bona fide hit. It topped the Modern Rock chart and got as high as #19 on the Hot 100.

The next single from American Idiot was “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, which made sense to me as I interpreted the September in the title to mean 9/11, and I desperately wanted to wake up from whatever alternative reality we went down that day. In reality, it has nothing to do with 9/11 and everything to do with the death of Armstrong’s father when he was a child. When I listen to it now, it just feels maudlin, and it’s not helped by the overdramatic video depicting a kid, probably the same age I was when the song was released, going off to war while his girlfriend begs him not to. It wound up being another big pop hit for Green Day, but it stalled out at #3 on my chart.

After that came the 9-minute epic “Jesus of Suburbia”. Its length meant it wasn’t going to get much radio play, and it only got to #27 on the Modern Rock chart. But it was always among the standouts from the album for me, and that enabled it to go as high as #2 on my chart near the end of 2005.

Green Day kept busy after the American Idiot album cycle wound down. They collaborated with fellow Number Ones artist U2 on a cover of The Skids’ 1979 song “The Saints Are Coming” to benefit Hurricane Katrina relief, which got to #6 on my chart. In 2007, they made a cameo in The Simpsons Movie and recorded a version of the theme song for the soundtrack. That year, they also recorded a pretty good cover of John Lennon’s “Working Class Hero” as part of a tribute album from Amnesty International to raise funds to alleviate the suffering of people in Darfur during Sudan's civil war. That one got up to #7 on my top 40.

While Green Day were working on the follow-up to American Idiot, they indulged in a garage rock side project called Foxboro Hot Tubs, releasing the album Stop Drop and Roll!!! in April 2008. Since alternative radio was desperate for any new Green Day songs, the first single “Mother Mary” got a decent chunk of airplay, and that got all the way to #11 on my top 40.

Eventually, Green Day were going to have to do a proper follow-up to American Idiot, even though there was no way they could possibly top it. Still, they tried as hard as they could to do so, and the result wound up being pretty strong. We’ll check in on that part of Green Day’s story later; they will be back in this column.