Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong used the band’s Coachella debut to make a political statement that had the crowd cheering.
It wouldn’t be a Green Day performance without a strong political message, and Billie Joe Armstrong gave fans exactly what they were expecting — and more — during the band’s epic Coachella 2025 debut.
The pop-punk rockers played to a packed crowd at the Indio, Calif., music festival’s main stage on Saturday night with a set list spanning their entire discography and including a couple of quick covers (just a few chords of Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” and a few lines of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin'”).
And while the energy never dipped, with fans jumping, dancing, and singing along for the entire hour-and-a-half set, some of the biggest reactions came after Armstrong tweaked some lyrics to reflect the current fraught political climate.
During the band’s opener, “American Idiot,” Armstrong repeated the same lyric change he debuted during their recent Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest appearance: “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” became “I’m not a part of a MAGA agenda.” The crowd reacted by cheering as loudly as if it were the first time Armstrong sang those lyrics.
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But the response to Armstrong’s second, newer updated lyric later was even bigger. During “Jesus of Suburbia,” he changed the line “runnin’ away from pain when you’ve been victimized” to “runnin’ away from pain like the kids from Palestine, tales from another broken home.” The reference to the Israel-Palestine war had the musical festival attendees clapping and cheering as Armstrong let the message sink in for an extended moment — if everyone hadn’t already been dancing, it felt like Armstrong would have gotten a standing ovation.
The set began on a high note, after the crowd sang along to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which played loudly over the speakers before Green Day walked on stage. After a Star Wars–themed introduction, the band launched into “American Idiot” and kept rolling out hit after hit with an aggressive pace like they didn’t even need to stop to take a breath. From classics from Dookie through to their most recent album, Saviors, they played it all, and the crowd was eating it up — mosh pits formed all the way in the back as if they weren’t a football field away from the stage.
Armstrong brought that audience fervor on stage multiple times during the set, first by inviting a woman named Brooke to sing “Know Your Enemy” with him. The visibly shocked and awed fan more than proved her Green Day knowledge by belting out the lyrics perfectly with Armstrong.
Then, during the “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” encore, the singer brought another fan on stage who promised he knew how to play the song on guitar. And though the man played off his initial flub with a good-natured “f—!” he launched into the chords with a professionalism that even Armstrong couldn’t help but call out. But while the frontman was impressed, he ultimately took back the guitar to end the show the way it should end: with Green Day rocking out as if it were still the ’90s.
Green Day is scheduled to return to Coachella for the festival’s second weekend on Saturday, April 19.
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