Green Day kicked off the Super Bowl LX festivities tonight (February 8) at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California. The Bay Area natives Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool ran through a medley of hits from American Idiot before a handful of former Super Bowl MVPs took the field. Watch their performance below.
To tease the performance, the NFL brought a string quartet on the field to perform Green Day’s sentimental “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” while Tom Brady, Peyton and Eli Manning, Jalen Hurts, and other past MVPs walked onto the field. The camera then panned to Green Day, who launched into their single “Holiday” atop a small stage on the edge of the field while a crowd of fans—waving flags, signs, and foam hands shaped like the American Idiot grenade hearts—cheered.
In their usual all-black attire, Green Day moved swiftly into “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and then “American Idiot,” emphasizing the energy of their pop-punk medley. Joining the trio onstage were their longtime touring bandmates, including Pinhead Gunpowder guitarist Jason White. For those who bet that the longtime outspoken punks would use their platform to critique the Trump administration, as they often do, sorry; Billie Joe Armstrong skipped over the second verse of “American Idiot” where he usually critiques the “redneck agenda,” and he axed the faux-representative announcement during “Holiday.”
This year’s Super Bowl pregame performers were Charlie Puth, Brandi Carlile, and Coco Jones. Puth sang “The Star Spangled Banner,” Carlile performed “America the Beautiful” with acoustic guitar, and Jones sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Later in the evening, Bad Bunny is set to play the official Super Bowl halftime show.
Green Day shared their last studio album, Saviors, in 2024. That same year, they reissued American Idiot for its 20th anniversary.
Read about Green Day’s “Basket Case” at No. 129 in The 250 Best Songs of the 1990s.
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