Currently Complacent: Green Day’s “Oh Love”

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I approached “Oh Love” with cautious optimism. With my mind racing; images became brick and sound became mortar as I built a world where “Oh Love” was a game-changer. Could this be it? Would “Oh Love” be the song to restore Green Day’s credibility?

I don’t actively like Green Day, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the California punks. Yeah, they’re a big, huge band whose popularity and genre form a unique paradox, and sure, over the years their sound has become decidedly less punk rock. But for all intents and purposes, Green Day is still a punk band. You can argue their ethics all day, but the point remains that ethics don’t define a genre, music does. So, yeah, of course they’re not as punk as they used to be, but they haven’t exactly cut the umbilical cord either.

What most punks fail to understand though, is that Green Day’s rise isn’t an example of how bad it can get, but how good. It’s common to misinterpret their increasingly melodic nature as a grab at accessibility, and therefore a larger audience. Whether you believe it sinister intentions or strengthening songwriting; it’s still irrelevant compared to their largest contribution to punk: progress.

Musically, Green Day are pushing boundaries. Nine minute songs and concept albums aren’t something you do when you want to capture a larger audience. It’s something you do for yourself. As rich and successful as Green Day most definitely are, taking creative risks for nothing more than art isn’t exactly the best way to meet the bottom line.

Now, this isn’t to say that their creative risks always pay off. 21st Century Breakdown is a ghost of a memory at this point, and “Know Your Enemy” was an objectively bad song. American Idiot has equal amounts fervent supporters and detractors. Green Day are inconsistent at best, but the fact remains that they’re always pushing.

So, when I heard about ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, and ¡Tré! I didn’t feel excitement; admiring a band’s adherence to progress isn’t the same as rabid, unabashed enjoyment. But, I was curious. And perhaps that’s the perfect summation of latter day Green Day’s place in the scene– where there once was passion there is now only detached curiosity.

“Oh Love” is the first single to be released from Uno and it represents a turning point where curiosity gives way to apathy. After years of a hobbling and misguided output, this is Green Day’s death rattle. There’s a fine line between self-expression and self-indulgence, and every twangy, Who-aping power chord makes it all the more nonexistent. The simple truth is that “Oh Love” is a bad song. At five minutes long, it overstays its welcome at the three minute mark. It’s repetitive melody is grating, not infectious. But the song could’ve worked. It may not have been good, but it could’ve at least functioned. If it were a little tighter, a little shorter it might have simply been forgettable. But no, instead we’re delivered a five minute manifesto aurally detailing all the ways Green Day has bought into their own legend.

But at the end of the day, I don’t care about music nearly as much as I care about lyrics. Music gives us everything superficial in punk rock; the posturing, the illusion of intensity. But the words behind the music give it ideas; it forms the hard, reverberating skeleton that gives a song life. “Oh Love” doesn’t have bones beneath the skin, and it appropriately feels lifeless. The song opens with Billie Joe Armstrong crooning, “Oh love, oh love. Won’t you rain on me tonight?” If you didn’t feel a connection yet, or even a semblance of meaning, you’re in luck– there’s more. Does “Oh life, oh life. Please don’t pass me by” stir your spirits? Does it express to you something deep, something you’ve long suspected but never confronted? No, what it does is fit neatly into a melody.

When “Oh Love” does try its hand at honesty, it feels disingenuous and cliche. Armstrong makes no attempt at any meaningful self-analysis, instead he uses some lazy pop-psychology that sounds like a teenager’s diary; emotionally immature and subtly aggrandizing. For one reason or another, Armstrong wants us know that he’s deep. But we’re past those shallow observations now. We have bands that gut themselves on stage, sharing with such painful honesty of their personal failures all you can do is avert your gaze.  “Talk myself out of feeling. Talk my way out of control. Talk myself out of falling in love. Falling in love with you,” just doesn’t cut it.

¡Uno! will be a game-changer. But maybe not in the way that I hoped. Green Day isn’t relevant to our scene anymore, and that’s not to say they’re bad– just that they don’t have any influence or hold. They’re a distant entity that’s tenuously connected to our scene through sound. Their importance lies in the fact that they’re gatekeepers, shepherding new fans from the masses into our tight-knit community. 21st Century Breakdown was mediocrity incarnate and dealt a vicious blow to Green Day. You see, it doesn’t matter how good or bad their music is anymore. It matters if it’s neither. I don’t think Green Day will fall into obscurity, but I do think they will be trudging through mediocrity. ¡Uno! comes out on September 25th. Mark your calendars.