This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.
Super simple song structures. Basic three-piece layering. What Green Day may lack in terms of instrumental complexity they more than make up with Billy Joe Armstrong’s lyrical prowess. Truly an underrated songwriter, the Green Day frontman is the writer of two critically acclaimed rock operas. I’ve covered other songs from American Idiot on Mental Jukebox, and now’s the time to pick one more.
If “Jesus of Suburbia” feels somewhat constrained musically, maybe it’s because it’s solely based on four chords. Fortunately, the sonics help, particularly with Armstrong’s guitar riffs throughout the track. But, like most Green Day songs, the best part is the words. The character known as the Jesus of Suburbia seems not too far fetched. The lyrics paint a picture of a suburban antagonist through three movements – from angsty to idyllic to angsty once again over the course of nine glorious minutes.
“I'm the son of rage and love. The Jesus of Suburbia. The bible of none of the above On a steady diet of Soda pop and Ritalin.”