We're a little less than three weeks away from the Super Bowl. We don't know which teams will play yet, but we know which entertainers will be on hand. Bad Bunny will play the Halftime Show. Charli Puth, Brandi Carlile, and Coco Jones will all sing during the pre-show. And now, the NFL announces that Green Day will also play the game's opening ceremony. Per the league's press release, the band will be "ushering generations of Super Bowl MVPs onto the field with a dynamic performance of their most iconic rock anthems."
Some background here: The Super Bowl is happening at Levis Stadium in Santa Clara. Green Day are from nearby Berkeley, and they're certainly not averse to this kind of high-visibility corporate gig. As bookings go, this all seems pretty normal. Billie Joe Armstrong's press-release quote is also pretty boilerplate: "We are super hyped to open Super Bowl 60 right in our backyard! We are honored to welcome the MVPs who’ve shaped the game and open the night for fans all over the world. Let’s have fun! Let’s get loud!" I have a hard time imagining this guy coming up with this particular sequence of words, but that's what the press release says.
But because everything has to be about fucking Donald Trump nowadays, outlets like the New York Post and TMZ are framing this as the NFL "add[ing] more controversy" to the game or getting in "another Trump dig." Various Trump officials were theatrically mad about the league booking Bad Bunny, a Trump critic, for the Halftime Show, and the promised that the game would be crawling with ICE agents.
Green Day have offered their own Trump criticisms, and Armstrong habitually changes his "American Idiot" lyrics live to sing that he's "not a part of the MAGA agenda." When Green Day played LA's Kia Forum on Saturday, Armstrong introduced "Holiday" by telling the crowd, "This song is anti-fascism! This song is anti-war! We stand up for our brothers and sisters in Minnesota! Ladies and gentlemen, Stephen Miller now has the floor."
Well then, fuck it, we'll try to get our clicks, too. Look! Trump's name in the headline! That's what everyone loves!
Despite what The Blast might say, the NFL has not established itself as being "anti-MAGA" by having Green Day play a Super Bowl opening ceremony. They're just putting on a show, and they're not going out of their way to draw from the tiny, depressing list of pro-Trump entertainers.
If anything, this just illustrates the Trump administration's failure in its efforts to silence and/or blacklist the many, many people who hate them. At this point, most of the country is already sick of this fucked-up, ragingly stupid administration for reasons that have nothing to do with football. As far as I can tell, nobody from the Trump administration has issued another chest-beating statement about the traitorous scum in Green Day, but just give it a couple more hours.
Anyway, here's Green Day's great football-themed video for "Nice Guys Finish Last," from the Varsity Blues soundtrack.
And here's the new trailer for Bad Bunny's Halftime Show.
The Super Bowl goes down 2/8, and the pre-show starts at 6PM eastern.
