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Hear Green Day’s Dance-Punk ‘Kill the DJ’ in Spiky Studio Form

Green Day / Photo by Getty Images

Green Day don’t actually want you to kill any DJs. It’s a point so obvious it feels almost gauche to point out, but given the recent relentless pace of depressing headlines, it seems important to explain these things slowly, like electro-pop savant John Maus advising you shouldn’t eat human beings. Otherwise, with neon Eurodance beats now long since having conquered American radio, the time for a guitar-led assault on mindless club music is probably the ripest it’s been since the Smiths urged us to “burn down the disco” a quarter-century ago.

Unfortunately, although evidently inspired by political frustration, latest ¡Uno! track “Kill the DJ” (via 101.1 The End) is a confusing mish-mash. It’s decade-late Franz Ferdinand-style dance-punk we can imagine blaring as annoyingly from some collar-popping West Village bar as, say, similarly pastiche-based Weezer lowpoint “Beverly Hills” used to shortly after this stuff got popular the last time around. Spikier than fellow ¡Uno! cut “Oh Love” musically, “Kill the DJ” is more barbed lyrically, too, in a way we couldn’t quite discern from the live version. But Billie Joe Armstrong’s screed about “Christian soldiers,” “Sodom and Gomorrah,” and even hearts and minds is still too opaque to communicate much, either ironically or earnestly. Here’s the guy who sang “When I Come Around” whispering threateningly: “Someone’s gonna get you, boy / Shoot the DJ down!” Everybody dance now?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=SALYdzGWftM%3Ffeature%3Dplayer_detailpage