Stop Drop And Roll!!!

“(It’s about) the culture of mass shooting that happens in America mixed with narcissistic social media. There’s this sort of rage happening, but it’s also now being filmed and we all have ourselves under surveillance, to me, that is so twisted. To get into the brain of someone like that was freaky. It freaked me out. After I wrote it, all I wanted to do was get that out of my brain because it just freaked me out.”

– Billie Joe Armstrong

The fastest, most aggressive song on the album is also the first single, and the first song Armstrong wrote for the project. “It was refreshing that it came so naturally to write a song like ‘Bang Bang,’” he says, “which is one of the best punk songs I’ve ever scribbled. And it just sort of happened. I didn’t think about it too much. I showed it to the guys. I’m like, ‘This feels like Green Day.’ I showed it to Mike and Tre and they were floored.” On the track, Armstrong sings from the perspective of a psychotic mass shooter (“I am a semiautomatic lonely boy/You’re dead/I’m well fed”). “The scary thing was when I went into the character’s head,” says Armstrong. “I started getting dizzy.”
– Rolling Stone

The song starts off with a radio broadcast about executions by terrorists.

In the first verse, the author is seen as an unstable, violent individual. He seems to be preparing for something and is clearly nervous and excited about it (I’m sweating bullets like a modern Romeo). The chorus shows that the author is willing to kill people for fame (bang, bang, give me fame) or die trying (shoot me up for entertainment). He shows his viewpoint by saying how the victims on screen dead while the shooters remain well-fed. The line I am a semi-automatic lonely boy may imply that the author is someone who has been ignored and shunned and now he wants to get back at everyone.

The next verse shows how the author sees these killings again and again (I testify like a lullaby of memories) and how the same group and people are mentioned again for their actions (broadcasting live and it’s on my radio). The author may be using the word photobomb as to mean how these actions are disrupting the daily news and Vietnam may imply how he saw the Vietnam war in the past via media. He also makes a reference to the extremist terrorists saying how everyone knows the truth but refuses to accept it to continue their ‘fame’ across the world. (I love a lie just like anybody else).

The next chorus shows the author’s intentions to start out as a celebrity martyr, someone who dies as a result of an extremist terrorist attack or fighting them. He wants to be the leading man of his own private drama and hero of the hour, being the one to orchestrate the whole fiasco. The author expresses his interest in terrorists (It’s my private move (Holy War)) and how he believes by being like them he would get on the screen for his moment of fame. World War Zero may imply how his actions are not widespread enough to affect everyone, but its enough to stir up trouble within his area or country.

The song could possibly be about a deranged, lonely school shooter with influences from the media using excuses such as propaganda from the Vietnam war or ISIS as a easy way to point the blame for his actions. With a clear view that nothing will change from the actions of the big

– song meaning written by u/potlah on r/GreenDay

Do you want to elope tonight
Getting lost in the shadows
All dressed up like a switchblade knife
Let’s hang in love from the gallows

Or we can take a walk around the lake
There’s a garden in the park there
Under the stars next to the fireside

anywhere is better than here

Oh Mother Mary, take my hand
I’ll be a saint, I’ll be your man
I’ll do most anything, ’cause I don’t care …
Oh Mother Mary, take my hand.

Take a ride on the midnight train
We’ll fall asleep at the station
Too much wine, driving me insane
And then we’ll miss our destination

Oh well, too bad, who cares, it’s all right.
As long as we will stick together
In hell we’ll run in rows of sunshine
We’ll watch it rise and shine forever

Oh Mother Mary, take my hand
I’ll be a saint, I’ll be your man
I’ll do most anything, ’cause I don’t care …
Oh Mother Mary, take my hand.