Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong Says He’s Renouncing U.S. Citizenship – ‘F–k America’
Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong told a U.K. audience he was renouncing his U.S. citizenship at a concert in London last Friday (June 24), as fan-captured footage shows.
The 50-year-old rock star was defiantly responding to last week's Supreme Court decision to overturn Americans' constitutional right to abortion, maintained for the last half-century.
Several other rock and metal artists reacted last week to the news of the controversial decision representing the Supreme Court's current supermajority of conservative justices. Rage Against the Machine and Coheed and Cambria replied by donating proceeds to reproductive rights organizations across the country. On Friday, the Green Day bandleader added his thoughts on the issue.
It happened during Green Day's performance at London Stadium as part of the pop-punk stalwarts' ongoing "Hella Mega Tour" alongside fellow rockers Fall Out Boy and Weezer.
Armstrong declared to the audience, "Fuck America." He explained he was "renouncing" his U.S. citizenship to relocate to the U.K., according to Deadline.
The singer continued, "There's too much fucking stupid in the world to go back to that miserable fucking excuse for a country," warning, "Oh, I'm not kidding, you're going to get a lot of me in the coming days."
But that's not all. At the next night's show in Huddersfield, England, Armstrong added, "Fuck the Supreme Court of America," saying that the justices responsible were "pricks," per Rolling Stone. The Green Day bandleader's citizenship declaration has made international headlines in The Hill, USA Today and Fox News.
During a 2016 American Music Awards performance of Green Day's single "Bang Bang," Armstrong and the band showed their political stripes by added the lyrical chant, "No Trump / No KKK / No fascist USA."
Green Day's newest music is last year's "Holy Toledo!" It joined other 2021 Green Day singles "Pollyanna" and "Here Comes the Shock." That September, they released a cover of KISS' "Rock and Roll All Nite." Green Day's latest album, Father of All Motherfuckers, emerged in 2020. It's currently unclear if last year's singles will appear on an album.
See Armstrong's renouncement below. Remaining "Hella Mega" European dates are here.