At Download 2025, Green Day hit two birds with one stone. They headlined and lit a political fire.
Billie Joe Armstrong and co. made their long-overdue debut at Donington Park on Friday (June 13), ripping through a stacked set that blended the bratty bite of Dookie with the defiance of American Idiot. But it wasn’t just about the hits. During a break in ‘Holiday’, Armstrong made it crystal clear that Green Day aren’t mellowing out with age. Not at all.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are slipping into fascism… it’s up to us to fight back!” he told the crowd, before asking 100,000 festivalgoers to collectively call Donald Trump a “fat bastard”.
This came after Trump’s decision to send in the National Guard on protesters rallying against ICE raids. It’s not the first time Armstrong’s taken aim at the ex-reality-TV-star-turned-president, but the fury felt extra raw this time. There’s a sense that, nearly two decades after American Idiot first landed, we’ve gone full circle — only the stakes feel even higher now.
Armstrong didn’t stop at Trump either. Midway through the band’s eponymous ‘American Idiot’, he tweaked the lyric to take a swipe at another power-hungry tech bro: “I’m not a part of the Elon agenda.”
Download has never really been known for its politics, but Green Day’s set turned Donington into a rally cry. And unlike a lot of legacy acts coasting on nostalgia, this felt vital. Urgent. Like punk in the fire-and-gasoline way it’s meant to be. The fact they dropped newer cuts like ‘Dilemma’ and ‘Bobby Sox’ without losing the crowd proves Green Day still have skin in the game.
In a festival weekend dominated by riffs, reunions and stupidly long merch queues, Green Day delivered something heavier than volume — they reminded us that protest still has a place on the main stage.
So yeah, it was loud. It was angry. But given their country is currently in the middle of losing its mind, it hit exactly how it needed to.
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