Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has told fans at a concert that he intends to renounce his United States citizenship following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade – a controversial move that eliminates the federal constitutional right to abortion nationwide.
During a performance as part of the band’s Hella Mega tour at the London Stadium in the UK on Friday, Armstrong expressed his frustration as he told the crowd: “F**k America. I’m f***king renouncing my citizenship. I’m f**king coming here.”
He went on to say there’s “too much f**king stupid in the world to go back to that miserable f**king excuse for a country,” before urging fans to be prepared, saying: “You’re going to get a lot more of me in the coming days.”
Armstrong is one of a number of American artists who have spoken out about the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the past few days. At Britain’s Glastonbury Festival, several performers, including Phoebe Bridgers, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar and Olivia Rodrigo, made a point of condemning the decision.
Bridgers led a “F**k the Supreme Court” chant and criticized “irrelevant motherf**kers trying to tell us what to do with our f**king bodies,” while teen star Olivia Rodrigo brought Lily Allen onto the stage and dedicated Allen’s song “F**k You” to the five Supreme Court justices who voted in the majority opinion to overturn the landmark ruling that had protected abortion as a federal right in the US for almost 50 years.
Rodrigo described herself as “devastated and terrified” by the news before she told Glastonbury crowds that “so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this,” and then dedicated the track to Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – who, Rodrigo said, “don’t give a sh*t about freedom.”
Lamar, who performed as one of the festival’s final headliners on Sunday night, ended his powerful set with a plea for women’s rights, chanting the words “Godspeed for women’s rights, they judge you, they judge Christ,” while wearing a crown of thorns soaked with fake blood.