Green Day – «Holiday» әні туралы

2005 single by Green Day

"Holiday" is an anti war protest song by American rock band Green Day. It was released as the third single from the group's seventh studio album American Idiot, and is also the third track. The song is in the key of F minor. Though the song is a prelude to "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "Holiday" was released as a single later on, on March 14, 2005. The song achieved considerable popularity across the world and performed moderately well on the charts. In the US, it reached number 19 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks and Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks charts. It debuted at number 11 in the United Kingdom and reached the top 20 in Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, and Norway.

One of two explicitly political songs on the album (the other being fellow single "American Idiot"), "Holiday" took two months to finish writing, because Armstrong continually felt his lyrics were not good enough. Aided by the encouragement of Cavallo, he completed the song. "Holiday" was inspired by the music of Bob Dylan. He later characterized the song as an outspoken "fuck you" to then President George W. Bush. Armstrong for the first time imagined how he would perform the songs he was writing, and envisioned an audience responding to his lyric "Can I get another Amen?" The song's bridge, which Armstrong hoped to be as "twisted as possible," was designed as a "politician's worst nightmare." The chorus's refrain—"This is our lives on holiday"—was intended to reflect the average American's apathy on the issues of the day. Armstrong characterized the song as "not anti American, it’s anti war."

In live performances, video screens would display footage of helicopters dropping bombs. Depending on the location of the performance, the lyric "the representative from California now has the floor" will be changed to reference the country or state where the song is being performed (e. g. "the representative from the United Kingdom now has the floor").

The first half of the video takes place in a car (a 1968 Mercury Monterey convertible), where Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool are partying around in Las Vegas. In the second half, they are cavorting in a bar where each of the band members portrays several different characters. Billie Joe Armstrong plays the mentioned Representative of California, two fighting clients, a punk rocker and a nerd. Tré Cool plays a drunken priest, an arrested patron, and a female prostitute. Mike Dirnt plays the barman, another punk, and a policeman. There are also scenes featuring seemingly worn down can can dancers. At the end of the video, the car smokes to a halt in the field that "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" begins in. Like the video for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", this video was directed by Samuel Bayer. The band arrived at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards in the same car, this time "pimped out" by James Washburn, a friend of the band.