GREEN DAY: World’s Greatest Cover Band? No, Time-Traveling Innovators!

At one of our parent companies other website, Diffuser.fm, Keith Hopkin recently wrote an article called, "13 Songs That Sound Just Like Green Day Songs".

I'm not going to include all of the examples (apparently, 21 Guns sounds just like every song ever recorded). But, some of these examples sound insanely similar. In fact, too similar to be mere coincidence.   I think you know what I'm hinting at here: Green Day are actually time-travelling Chrononauts who used a portal in the fabric of space time to go back and influence some of the greatest bands of the 60s, 70s and 80s!   Why do you think Billie Joe Armstrong has Liza Minnelli's hairstyle?

She stole it from him!

Exhibit 1A-Green Day's Warning(2000)

Catchy, right?

EXHIBIT 1b-The Kink's Picture book(1968)

Sweet Sunny Afternoon! Those songs really sound a lot alike! So that means the Green Day time-travelers must have gone back to at least before 1968 and met Ray and Dave Davies (probably in a swingin' London pub) and given them some pointers on chord progressions.  But did they go back even further through the quantum foam than 1968 even?

exhibit 2A: Green Day "Waiting"(2000)

Now that's a cool song and I don't think it even has anything to do with that horrible Ryan Reynolds movie.

EXHIBIT 2B: Petula Clark "Downtown" (1964)

Wow.  That really sounds like that Green Day song.  The chorus even begins with the word "downtown" just like in Green Day's "Waiting".  You know, Miss Petula Clark, just because some punk rockers from the nineties somehow travel back in time and give you an idea for a hit song you don't have to be so blatant in ripping it off.  What do you want? Carly Rae Jepsen to come back through the time portal and sing it for you, too?!?!

exhibit 3A: Green Day "21 Guns" (2009)

"21 Guns" was nominated for a Grammy award so you know Monsieurs Armstrong and Cool must've picked out some really awesome band to go back in time to and inspire with such a great tune!

Exhibit 3B: Mott the Hoople "All the young Dudes" (1972)

Mott the Flippin' Hoople?!?! You use the miracle of time travel to go back nearly 40 years just to give a Grammy caliber song to Mott the Hoople??  That would be like traveling back to the day JFK was shot and telling Governor Conally to not bother wearing a clean shirt.  I don't know what Mott's up to these days but I thought I saw The Hoople busking for bus fare the other day down at the Greyhound station.

Exhibit 3c: The Theme from "Full House" (1987)

In the original article on Diffuser Keith Hopkin points out a number of other artists that recorded their own versions of "21 Guns" (Neil Young, ELO, Scott McKenzie) but this is where Mr. Hopkin's piece really hooked me.

First, here's the guitar solo from "21 Guns"

And here's the theme from the sit-com "Full House"

So, if Green Day hadn't recorded "21 Guns" in 2009 and then traveled back in time to 1987  "Full House" would never have had such a bitchin' theme song and the Olsen twins never would have become bazillionaires. Ok, I'm starting to realize how time travel may not be all up-side.

Exhibit 41: Green Day "Jesus of Suburbia" (2004)

This song was from Green Day's seminal 2004 album American Idiot. So it's fitting, I guess, that they went back in time exactly 20 years to give the song to some Canadian idiot.

exhibit 4B: Bryan Adams "Summer of '69: (1984)

I loved "Summer of '69"!!  Oh, sorry...typo. I meant to write, "I wanted to jam a number 2 lead pencil into my ear canal and twist it until cerebral fluid started dripping out of my tear ducts every time this piece of crap song would come on my Junior year of High School."   My God, Green Day, what hast thou wrought?!?!  This tears it.  Time travel cannot be trusted in the hands of a group of pot-smoking degenerate Bush-haters.  If you must time-travel, for the love of all that is holy, restrict your adventures to only the age of dinosaurs.  At least there, stepping on a butterfly and thereby causing mankind to be erased forever is the worst that can happen. I couldn't take another Bryan Adams radio single.