Sobriety, colonoscopies and fighting the MAGA agenda: Green Day on making a racket in 2024

Green Day rang in the new year by irking the richest man in the world.

Singing the California punk trio's George W. Bush-era "American Idiot" on "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve With Ryan Seacrest," frontman Billie Joe Armstrong tweaked a lyric about Bush's "redneck agenda" to register his disgust with the "MAGA agenda" that former President Donald Trump hopes to bring back to the Oval Office. Conservative pundits and other figures on the right promptly freaked out, including Elon Musk, who told his 168 million followers on X that Green Day had gone from "raging against the machine to milquetoastedly raging for it."

For a band of longtime rabble-rousers, it was an auspicious start to 2024 — and a great way to drum up attention ahead of its new album, "Saviors."

But as befits a group with deep roots in Berkeley's radical-collectivist punk scene, don't think that Armstrong is anxiously awaiting an invite to play a rally for President Joe Biden.

"I'm really reluctant to get in bed with any politician," the singer says. "Not that we've ever been asked," he adds with a laugh. "I think there's a side of us that people might look at as being anti-American, so they hold us at arm's length.

"But if we didn't care about this country, we wouldn't say anything."

The intemperance of rebellion and the wisdom of experience — that's the balance Green Day strikes on "Saviors," the trio's 14th studio LP. Due Friday, 30 years after the