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“Aren’t you supposed to wait another five years for this? My Chemical Romance just broke up!” Billie Joe Armstrong on the emo resurgence
The singer shares his thoughts on the genre’s supposedly premature return.
Image: Daniel Boczarski / Getty Images
The overwhelming demand for festivals like When We Were Young and the return of bands like Blink-182 (with Tom DeLonge) and Fall Out Boy of late all point to one thing: that emo and pop punk are back stronger than ever — a phenomenon Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong says has come too early.
The frontman — whose band recently performed at the When We Were Young pop-punk festival — points out in an interview with The Guardian that “Emo was dead — then just five years later we’re having emo club nights.”
“Like, aren’t you supposed to wait another five years for this? My Chemical Romance just broke up!”
According to Armstrong, the genre’s resurgence could be attributed to the way listeners are now discovering their music: “I think streaming and the way things go viral now [is fueling it],” he says.
“There’s this band, the Walters, that broke up four years ago and suddenly they have this song that’s everywhere. Same thing with Deftones — all of a sudden their music is showing up on all these TikTok videos. There’s this new algorithmic way of discovering new stuff.”
“It’s really prevalent in rock music and it shows how people are paying less attention to the radio [and other traditional platforms].”
In related news, Green Day’s 14th studio album Saviors is set to arrive on 19 January next year. So far, three singles have been released: Dilemma, The American Dream Is Killing Me and Look Ma, No Brains!
The group will also be embarking on a North American tour next year with support from the Smashing Pumpkins, Rancid, as well as the Linda Lindas.
Check out the full list of dates and get your tickets at Green Day.