Musicians make all kinds of announcements when they’re playing live. Watch enough live music and you’re liable to hear almost any kind of life change imaginable — engagements, breakups and births among them. But at a recent concert in London, Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong engaged in what might be a first, telling the crowd that had come to see his band play on their Hella Mega tour that he was renouncing his U.S. citizenship.
Ultimate Classic Rock has more details, and noted that Armstrong was also critical of the Supreme Court’s verdict in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. (Armstrong’s actual wording was a bit more succinct, and a lot more profane.) One attendee recorded part of what Armstrong stated and made it widely available via Twitter.
While onstage, Armstrong said, “There’s just too much f*cking stupid in the world to go back to that miserable f*cking excuse for a country.” He went on to clarify that he was “not kidding.”
To clarify, Armstrong’s onstage declaration does not act as an official renunciation of his citizenship. The State Department does provide a guide to the process, which would involve — if the citizen in question was abroad — visiting an embassy or consulate and then signing “an oath of renunciation.”
It’s not clear if Armstrong was serious or if he was speaking metaphorically. He did, however, tell the crowd in London that “you’re going to get a lot of me” in the near future.
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