Green Day’s new video for ‘queer singalong’ single ‘Bobby Sox’ is bursting with LGBTQ+ joy
A still from Green Day’s new single ‘Bobby Sox’. (Green Day/YouTube)
Green Day has released a video for their latest single “Bobby Sox”, and it’s absolutely bursting with queer joy, kisses and friendship.
The band’s new album Saviours was released on Friday (19 January), alongside a wholesome and very queer video for single “Bobby Sox”.
The video captures Green Day playing at a house party in California featuring a crowd full of musicians, including teen members of the Linda Lindas, who will be touring with Green Day this year, as well as members of Zulu and Destroy Boy.
The “Bobby Sox” video, described by the band as a “queer singalong”, also features party-goers flipping off the roof to crowd-surf, crowd members dancing, people giving each other tattoos, and even toddlers being carried by their parents to the music.
The video ends with a montage of kisses, from passionate make-outs, to platonic cheek-kisses, to pecks on the fluffy heads of dogs, interspersed with plenty of queer couples, ending with Green Day bandmates Tré Cool and Mike Dirnt kissing frontman Billie Joe Armstrong on the cheeks.
Speaking in an interview about the new single, Armstrong – who came out as bisexual in 1995 – explained that it’s “f**king cool” that people look up to him as a “bisexual icon”, and that he considers the new single to be a “queer singalong”.
The song, which features queer lyrics – “Do you wanna be my girlfriend? / Do you wanna be my boyfriend? / We’ll walk the cemetery and I’ll kiss you again / And make our dead friends blush” – was initially inspired by Armstrong’s quiet nights in with his wife, but he then said became “liberating” to sing when he considered the queer lyrics.
“Nowadays it’s more common for kids to be LGBTQ, and there’s more support,” he said.
“But for us, back in the day, that was like the beginning of when people were able to openly say things like that.”
Green Day also came out in support of the trans community in recent weeks, with Armstrong calling the current anti-trans moral panic “f**king close-minded”.
“I just think they’re f**king close-minded. It’s like people are afraid of their children,” he said. “Why would you be afraid? Why don’t you let your kid just be the kid that they are?”.
