Green Day marked the 25th anniversary of their seminal album Dookie and looked ahead to their next album, Father of All… with a old-school rock & roll performance at the American Music Awards Sunday.
Billie Eilish took the stage to announce the “iconic” band, which she cited as a massive influence on her and her brother Finneas. Rolling Stone previously paired Eilish and Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong in conversation in the Musicians on Musicians issue.
The band tore into their new single “Father of All…” to kick off their performance — a simple rock & roll affair that saw Armstrong decked out in a white jacket and classically spiked hair. They then segued into their classic 1994 hit “Basket Case” as the audience nearly opened up the pit.
green day just made everyone’s emo phase jump out in that audience with this throwback #AMAs pic.twitter.com/2ogV0fPjRb
— ً (@TheVoiceTea) November 25, 2019
Green Day announced Father of All… in September, and the album is set to arrive February 7th. The LP marks the group’s 13th and first since 2016’s Revolution Radio. In an interview with Rolling Stone about the LP, Armstrong spoke about how he wanted to incorporate his love of soul music into Green Day’s sound, and the breakthrough came with the album’s title track, which finds him singing in a Prince-inspired falsetto.
“I told my engineer, ‘I might look like a fucking idiot, but bear with me,’” Armstrong said of the song’s creation, adding “Father of All…” felt like “a unicorn falling out of the sky: I don’t know what this is, I don’t know how I did it, but this is the direction I’m headed.”
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Green Day will spend next year touring in support of Father of All… while linking up with Weezer and Fall Out Boy for the Hella Mega stadium tour. The trek opens with a European let in June, while the North American run kicks off July 17th in Seattle, Washington.