2004 Week
This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2004 Week wraps here with rap trio Trillville, whose signature 2004 hit “Some Cut” has proved one of the most memorable hip-hop hits of 20 years ago, an incredibly enduring reference point across genres in the years since.
In an era when buzzy singles can spend just one week in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 before completely falling off the chart, the lifespan of a single feels especially arbitrary. Songs can stay perched at No. 1 for weeks or be the talk of the town and a distant memory within a three-day period.
Songs like Trillville’s “Some Cut,” however, have proven to boast a gloriously endless shelf life. Twenty years removed from its initial single run, “Some Cut” remains the foundation of not just some of the biggest hits and dance trends of the first half of the 2020s, but also eternal inspiration for the squeaking production motif that has enamored countless styles and genres, from R&B and reggaeton to K-pop and Jersey club.
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“This is the sound,” stresses Jamal “Dirty Mouth” Glaze. “It’s an authentic sound. You can’t deny that sound because that’s the golden era of [Southern hip-hop and crunk], from the ‘90s to the early 2000s.”
In 2004, “Some Cut” climbed to a peak of No. 14 on the Hot 100, earning the crunk trio the biggest chart hit of their career and one of the biggest club hits of the early ’00s. According to Luminate, “Some Cut” has earned over 157.3 million official on-demand U.S. streams to date and sold nearly 500,000 pure copies. Blessed by Lil Jon’s Midas touch, the unabashedly carnal track meticulously balances a gentle piano riff, sultry bass and guitar — and, of course, that iconic squeak loop. With the late Cutty Cartel kicking off the affair by rapping and singing perhaps the greatest series of questions in contemporary music — “What it is ho, what’s up? / Can a n—a get in them guts?” — “Some Cut” is nasty and proud. It’s the effortlessly suave delivery of each Trillville member, alongside Cutty, that allows the track to playfully toe the line between raunch and forbidden fantasy.
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The crown jewel of Trillville and Lil Jon’s collaborations, the genesis of “Some Cut” lies in the scrappy can-do attitude of the group’s Donnell “Don P” Prince. As he tells it, Trillville was toiling away in the club circuit for a few years before “Some Cut,” packing out shows in Atlanta — thanks, in part, to group member Lawrence “LA” Edwards, who was a club promoter at the time. Eventually, one of Don P’s friends gave him the number to the CEO of BME Records, Lil Jon’s record label, and he seized the opportunity.
“I was like, ‘Hey, man, we got something here! People keep telling me that our music dope, that they like it!’” recalls Don P. “It was something about the way I said it, because he was like, ‘Usually, people keep telling me that they’re the dopest and the best.’ So, he called me to the office, we developed a relationship from there, and I started going to the office every single day.”
Don P’s persistence paid off tenfold once Lil Jon eventually attended a big warehouse show the group had been hard at work preparing for. Lil Scrappy, another Lil Jon protege-turned-club hitmaker, was also in attendance that night at the “crazy show,” which jumpstarted the professional relationships between all artists involved.
In 2004, Jon launched BME Recordings with The King of Crunk & BME Recordings Present: Trillville & Lil Scrappy as the fledgling label’s first offering. A split album with each side hosting the respective debut albums of Trillville and Lil Scrappy, the LP debuted and peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard 200, spawning several singles, including the seminal “Some Cut,” and ultimately shifting over 1.25 million album-equivalent units.
Rooted in the raw, raucous energy of crunk music, the recording sessions for Trillville & Scrappy mirrored the vibe of the music. “It was just a party atmosphere, drinks everywhere,” Dirty Mouth reminisces. “You had the porn playing on the TV, that’s how we got inspired. We was young, wild and we had fun.”
“With us, it was never just a [regular] studio session,” Don P adds. “The song that you hear is the vibe that was happening.”
Of course, that studio session yielded Lil Jon’s magical “squeak” moment, which resulted in the priceless ingredient that made “Some Cut” such an irresistibly catchy and oft-imitated record. As the story goes, the Trillville crew were in the studio working on songs for their debut LP when the playback of “Some Cut” was queued up in the system. “We kept hearing something,” Don P says. “And I was like ‘What the hell are they talking about?’ Well, every time [Lil Jon] was playing the song back, he was [makes rocking motion] and the chair was squeaking. All at the same time, everybody was like, ‘It’s the chair! It’s the chair!’”
In a moment of ingenuity that can only happen when a studio session is directed by the vibe of its artists, they mic’d the chair up, recorded the squeaks and placed them throughout the record — most prominently in the intro. Though those squeaks came from a chair, they recall the sound of a mattress during sex, hence its prominence as a go-to sample across genres in the decades since.
“We was always an innovative and creative and we worked together because Lil Jon is always innovative and creative as well,” reflects Don P. “You could take any other group and I promise you they wouldn’t do that.”
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That likely is the case, but even with its infectious composition, “Some Cut” wasn’t even originally planned to be a single from Trillville & Scrappy. “Neva Eva,” which peaked at No. 77 on the Hot 100, arrived on Nov. 4, 2003, as the first single for Trillville, while “Head Bussa” (with Lil Jon) was the first single for Scrappy. With “No Problem” heating up the streets as the second Scrappy single, the original plan was for the Pastor Troy-assisted “Get Some Crunk in Yo System” to serve as the second single from Trillville.
“[The remix version with Snoop Dogg and Pitbull] of ‘Some Cut’ was supposed to be the first single from our new album, Trillville: Reloaded,” notes Don P. “What happened was, the DJs started playing [the original] ‘Some Cut’ on they own, so I called Naim [Ali], who our A&R at the time, after I saw how people were going up for the record in the clubs, and said, ‘Ay, bro, we need to push this record.”
Just like how they self-advocated to originally connect with Lil Jon, having their ear to the streets resulted in the smartest marketing pivot of Trillville’s career. Trillville, BME and Warner Records didn’t just give “Some Cut” a half-hearted push for a late-album cycle single, they cranked out “a clean [version], super clean [version and], a super duper clean radio version,” jokes Don P. “There was so many versions of that song we did, I still don’t know which one to rap when I perform, to this day!”
Given that the crunk music blueprint involves the songs percolating in the streets and clubs before breaking through on radio, Trillville had already heard “Some Cut” outside – but hearing it on the radio confirmed to them that the song had reach a different level of popularity.
“I was driving and I heard [“Some Cut”] on either 107 or V103, I had to pull over!” laughs Dirty Mouth, “That thang was jamming too! I was like, ‘Damn, it’s on now!’”
And on, it was. In just one week, “Some Cut” had eclipsed “Neva Eva” as Trillville’s highest-charting entry on Billboard’s marquee singles chart, and it wouldn’t even hit its peak until 14 weeks later. For Trillville, the biggest signifier that the song was resonating on a higher level than their previous songs was the increased diversification of their crowds.
“I just noticed the crowd went from a bunch of Black people to a bunch of Black and white people to a bunch of Black, white, and Mexican people,” says Don P, with Dirty Mouth chiming in, “It was more women, though! More women than dudes and the dudes came when the women came.”
Crafting records specifically catered to women is a hip-hop practice that is as storied as it is convoluted in the greater context of the misogyny that is intrinsically tied to the genre. With their previous singles erring more on the gangster side than the smooth-talking Lotharios they posture as on “Some Cut,” Trillville knew they needed something for the women.
“We needed a female record,” explains Dirty Mouth. “We came up in the era of pushing and shoving and throwing bows and sweating — now it’s time to get on with the ladies. Give the ladies something that they can gravitate to. So, that’s what we did.”
So, how exactly does a song this crass – made in a studio with porn playing in the background, no less – find a home amongst the ladies? Well, one answer lies in the late Cutty Cartel’s hook. Caked in a seductive Southern drawl and delivered with a swaggering wink that complements the twinkling keys in the production, Cutty’s hook is arguably the most recognizable part of “Some Cut,” at least as far as vocals go. The smoothness of his performance simultaneously masquerades the raunch of his lyrics, and provides a smart juxtaposition to the gruff delivery of each Trillville member.
“Rest in peace, Cutty,” Don P says of the inimitable artist, who passed on Aug. 30, 2019. “He so smooth with it. He’s a rapper and an R&B singer, so he could come with that melodic sound.” Dirty mouth adds: “He’s the Nate Dogg of the South, I always say!”
In addition to Cutty’s suave hook, the “Some Cut” music video also helped the track carve out an eternal place in the hearts of women across the country. In fact, the Fat Cats-helmed clip – which found the Trillville crew renting a mansion for a single day to host a house party – featured appearances from several women who would go on to be major fixtures in entertainment, including reality television star Porsha Williams and prolific video vixen Summer Walker (not to be confused with the future R&B star of the same name).
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And, in the spirit of a truly timeless record, “Some Cut” is still a source of inspiration for some of today’s biggest artists across R&B and hip-hop, namely TDE rap star Doechii, three-time Grammy-winner Victoria Monét and, of course, Beyoncé, who paid tribute to Cutty’s chorus backing vocals in the third verse of her remix of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage.” Before Monét’s “On My Mama,” which samples another beloved ’00s Southern hip-hop smash (Chalie Boy’s “I Look Good”), she had a major viral moment in 2021 with a dance break set to the “Some Cut” intro. Choreographed by Ysabelle Capitulé, who was still a child when “Some Cut” first hit the streets, the dance break spawned hundreds of thousands of recreations across social media.
Last year, just one year shy of the 20th anniversary of “Some Cut,” Doechii interpolated the track on her own Kodak Black-assisted “What It Is (Block Boy).” Opting to flip Cutty’s hook to a woman’s perspective instead of taking a stab at the infamous “squeak” sound, Doechii rode “What It Is” to the biggest hit of her career, peaking at No. 29 on the Hot 100 and earning her her first RIAA Platinum plaque. At the 2023 BET Awards, Trillville joined Doechii onstage to perform a mashup of both tracks.
“My potna, J. White Did It produced [‘What It Is’],” says Don P. “He hit me up and told me he was doing something, but I just didn’t know what it was. Then Warner Brothers hit us up, [played us the record], and I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ I loved that song from the very first time I heard it. So, of course, we all cleared it. I had no idea it was going to be that huge, but I kinda did because I loved it so much.”
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Although “Some Cut” has remained one of the go-to early ’00s hip-hop cuts for contemporary performers, crunk, the defining sound of Trillvile’s catalog, is notably absent from the current mainstream. With a movie based on the Trillville story due early next year (music video director Todd Uno is currently attached to direct) alongside an accompanying soundtrack, Don P, Dirty Mouth and LA hope to reignite the coals of crunk outside of all the callbacks to “Cut.”
“I wrote the script three years ago, and we just started production this year,” reveals Don P. “It’s been fun to cast other actors that look like us going through the experiences that we went through back then. This movie is going to show the young people what it was and give older people that nostalgic feel.”
And as for the soundtrack? “It’s literally going to sound like an updated version of 2004 crunk,” teases Don P. “We’re trendsetters, it’s been such a pleasure to know that people really appreciated what we brought to the table, and the movie and soundtrack reflect that.”
This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2004 Week continues here with the story behind Bowling for Soup’s “1985,” a ruefully nostalgic top 40 hit that has taken on a different meaning for its creators now that it’s been longer since its release than it was since the mid-’80s at the time.
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Like many songs, “1985” started with nothing but a wordless hook. It first came to former SR-71 frontman Mitch Allan while he was driving, after which he temporarily added in some filler to start with: “She’s a, she’s a, she’s a roller coaster.”
His decision to later swap it out for “19, 19, 1985” was just as random. The reason it stuck? “Honestly, it sang fantastic,” he recalls to Billboard over 20 years later.
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Later, the world would agree. Bowling for Soup had a No. 23 hit with the nostalgic earworm on the Billboard Hot 100 and a No. 10 peak on the Pop Airplay chart, propelling the band’s record A Hangover You Don’t Deserve to a career high of No. 37 on the Billboard 200. In the two decades since, the track has amassed over 372.7 million on-demand official U.S. streams, according to Luminate, and folks who weren’t even alive in the title year continue to gleefully sing along when it comes on the radio or plays at a party, as it still frequently does.
But before it was an era-defining legacy hit for BFS, Allan had buried his original version on SR-71’s final album Here We Go Again, which was only released in Japan (until 2010, when it was finally made available in the U.S.). He’d pieced together the rest of the track on a trip to Machu Picchu, asking fellow tourists in his hiking group to shout out their favorite ‘80s references — “Springsteen!” “Madonna!” — and weaving them into an admittedly cynical takedown of a Prozac-dependent suburban housewife named Debbie with some help from his drummer, John Allen.
If not for producer Butch Walker, “1985” would’ve never been widely heard in the U.S., much less become an enduring smash for generations. But Walker had worked with Allan and SR-71 in the past, and at the suggestion of his manager, Jonathan Daniel, he decided that the track deserved a second life – something the guys of Bowling for Soup, fresh off their first Grammy nomination for pop-punk radio hit “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” in 2003, could give it.
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“The song was good, but it wasn’t great yet,” Walker recalls. “It’s all about who’s presenting it. I think we realized that maybe the presentation of it originally was wrong.”
First things came first. Led by frontman Jaret Reddick and bandmates Chris Burney, Gary Wiseman, and Rob Felicetti, the tongue-wagging Bowling for Soup had made a name off not taking itself too seriously, specializing in the creation of meme songs before memes were even a thing. That meant that some of the more sardonic lines about condoms breaking and George Michael’s sexuality needed to go.
“That’s the difference between the humor in SR-71 and us,” says Reddick. “Their songs had that grit in their comedy – it’s more snarky. Our stuff is just blatantly funny.”
He and Walker sat in a room together dissecting “1985” line by line, subbing in lyrics about Duran Duran and Ozzy Osbourne to coincide more with the personal tastes of Reddick, who was a teenager during the titular time period. The frontman gave the tune a peppier delivery, and Walker made it so that the song’s sunny “woo-hoo-hoo” hook was the very first thing listeners heard when pressing “play.”
“It was a collaborative effort,” Reddick says. “Had I heard the song by SR-71, I’m certain I would’ve liked it, ’cause I’m a fan of that band. But I don’t think it gives me the same visual at all.”
Allan, now an L.A.-based writer-producer who’s worked with Bebe Rexha and Demi Lovato, agrees. “[Reddick] took this sad woman who we were making fun of and turned her into the hero of the story,” he marvels. “She’s suddenly celebrating that she got to live in 1985 and that we, the listener, didn’t. Life was so much better then, and she got to experience it.
“[The original] version in my brain has been replaced by Bowling for Soup’s,” he concludes.
Released as the lead single off Hangover, “1985” made BFS a staple of the early 2000s pop-punk movement. The band cosplayed as Robert Palmer, Run-DMC and Limp Bizkit in the track’s music video (which Reddick says he’s especially proud of), complete with a Tawny Kitaen lookalike and a cameo from Allan.
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They embarked on a tour, and then another one and another one, discovering that their fans across the world never tired of mocking Debbie night after night – because, let’s face it: “The song’s kind of mean,” Reddick admits. “We made it nicer, for sure. But there’s still a bit of hopelessness to it.”
The guys didn’t get sick of playing it, either. “The fact that it’s something our band does that makes people happy – that’s the thing that never gets old,” Reddick continues. “Right from the first two chords, they know what it is. Every phone comes up during that song. People still laugh at ‘When did Mötley Crüe become classic rock?’”
But something peculiar happened right around the time Bowling for Soup’s version of the song came out – Reddick became a parent. So did Allan. Their first-born kids are now 21 and 20, respectively, almost the exact number of years between 1985 and 2004 as 2004 and 2024. As time went by, a song about nostalgia became nostalgic in and of itself, and its creators realized that they were beginning to identify more with Debbie than her proverbial two kids in high school. In 2021, Bowling for Soup put out a track titled “Getting Old Sucks (But Everybody’s Doing It).”
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“I started to see it really quickly,” remembers Reddick, now a father of three. “It wasn’t lost on me that that was actually happening in my life. When they’re really little, they still think all your jokes are funny. Then they go through this time where they don’t think you’re funny, then they think you’re funny again but roll their eyes. My kids’ teachers tell them, ‘I heard your dad on the radio today,’ and they’re just like, ‘Okay, great. He also mowed the lawn today, and there’s a heap of dishes to get done.’”
Allan relates: “I’m Dad – I’m not cool.”
Luckily for them both, as well as all the former cool kids-turned-Debbies, things have a way of coming back into fashion. Debbie herself — who, as Reddick points out, is probably a grandma now — would be overjoyed that her precious Springsteen and Madonna are both on arena tours in 2024, while U2 is on the heels of a successful Las Vegas residency. And modern pop stars have been in the midst of a pop-punk renaissance for most of the decade now, replicating the sounds popularized by Bowling for Soup and their peers.
“Everybody’s trying to make records sound like [“1985”] now,” Walker says with a chuckle. “It’s ironic that that’s where we’re at. I guess I’ve been alive that f–king long … I can’t believe we’re already back at recycling the emo era and the pop punk era, sound-wise.”
“All my kids went through a pop-punk phase,” adds Allan. “It takes them a minute. They discover bands, and then they discover my band. I get texts from my oldest who’s at UCSB, and she’ll be at a party and there’s a band playing, and they’ll be playing ‘1985.’ She’s like, ‘Oh my god, my dad wrote that!’”
Meanwhile, “1985” has demonstrated an impressive longevity. It was certified double platinum in 2019, and Reddick and Allan still enjoy sending each other young musicians’ updated covers of the song with references to the early ’00s and 2010s – which, ironically, sometimes go over the now-52-year-old Reddick’s head.
“I’m Debbie!” he proclaims, mystified. “People come up to us like, ‘I am Debbie.’ She’s probably now looking back at her kids, and they’re the Debbies of the world. And she’s like, ‘You see?’”
But just as Debbie gets the last laugh in her story, so does he: Reddick remembers a time when his daughter called him from science class in disbelief, asking if he knew just how many Spotify listeners his band had. “I was like, ‘I don’t know, 2 million monthly?’ She goes, ‘Dad, that’s a lot!’ I go ‘Yeah, I’ve been trying to tell you that.’” (For the record, BFS has nearly 4 million monthly listeners on the platform at press time.)
Reddick, Allan and Walker are all living in real time the reason they believe “1985” has had such a lasting resonance across generations. Aging and nostalgia are some of the only truly universal human experiences, which means that the song, unlike some of the dated ‘80s tropes it pokes fun at, will probably never go out of style.
But “1985” also speaks to the power of leaving egos at the door in service of collaboration. The project wouldn’t have been a success story without Allan being open to having his creation improved upon, or Bowling for Soup’s willingness to stand behind a song that they hadn’t written originally.
“I’m super glad this song has had such a good run,” Reddick says. “I’m not sure that we wouldn’t be where we are today [without it], but I certainly am thankful we are.”
“You hope a song goes on the charts, let alone enters the top 10, let alone is around a year later,” Allan remarks. “It takes a village. But I’m so happy to live in that village, you know?”
This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2004 Week continues here as we hear from an artist behind arguably the year’s biggest rock album: Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day, whose punk-rock opera American Idiot sold millions and spawned four huge hit singles, led by its pointedly enduring titular protest anthem.
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One of music’s biggest stories in 2004 was Green Day’s resurrection. After a ’90s run that included era-defining alt-rock and MTV hits like “Longview,” “Basket Case,” “When I Come Around” and “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” the band had taken a folkier turn on its 2000 album Warning – and experienced its softest sales and least enthusiastic reviews in years. With a new generation of pop-punk and emo bands emerging, Green Day could’ve easily seemed like a relic by 2004.
But with that year’s album American Idiot, Green Day reasserted itself as a mainstream force – eclipsing even its monumental ’90s – with a dramatic reinvention. On the album, the band infused its tested brand of pop-punk with classic-rock grandiosity, grafting an anti-war storyline of disillusionment onto the 57-minute set; in interviews ahead of its release, Green Day’s members likened American Idiot to a “punk-rock opera,” drawing a direct line from idols like The Who to their own new project.
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“The melodies are based on the tradition of Lennon and McCartney,” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong tells Billboard today. “That’s where we were trying to push our stuff and take our melodies and the whole idea of Green Day – pushing it to a level that we thought could be our Tommy moment, or our Sgt. Pepper’s.”
The high-concept, high-octane album blew up like the heart-shaped hand grenade on its iconic cover. Recorded during the early days of the Iraq War and released three months before President George W. Bush’s eventual re-election, the title track and lead single took aim at news illiteracy, widespread propaganda and “a redneck agenda”; in its stark, Grammy-nominated video, the stripes wash off a giant American flag suspended behind the band. “American Idiot” topped the Alternative Airplay chart, snagged a Grammy nomination for Record of the Year and ignited a run of subsequent Idiot Hot 100 smashes — which included the caustic protest anthem “Holiday” (No. 19), as well as the power ballads “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” (Nos. 2 and 6, respectively).
All told, American Idiot snagged six Grammy nominations (winning Best Rock Album), was certified six-times platinum by the RIAA, and launched a 17-month world tour that spawned the live album Bullet in a Bible. In a couple short years, Green Day went from possibly-over-the-hump ’90s greats to being in the mix for the world’s biggest rock band.
Recently, Armstrong says, a fan approached him at London’s BRIT Awards. “They go, ‘American Idiot changed my life.’ And I said, ‘It changed my life too!’” he recalls with a laugh. “It changed everything for me. … It really made me feel like I can spread my wings. It proved to me that, if you have the guts to do it, then you can make it happen. When you have a hunch that it’s time to make a big statement, musically, and it gets acknowledged, it’s the best feeling ever.”
In the years since its release, American Idiot’s stature has only grown. Green Day has frequently harnessed the album’s urgent political energy since, including for this year’s Saviors, and American Idiot became the basis of the Tony-winning 2009 musical of the same name. Its songs remain staples of the band’s concerts, and Green Day has made headlines in recent years by revising the title track’s lyrics to address former President Donald Trump. This year, the band will perform American Idiot — as well as another of its seminal albums celebrating a milestone anniversary, 1994’s Dookie — in full on The Saviors Tour of North American stadiums.
On the eve of that tour, which kicks off overseas in late May, Armstrong admits, “I haven’t really acknowledged how proud I am of that record in a long time.” Below he talks more about American Idiot, being inspired by the New York bands of the early ’00s (and not so much by the period’s pop-punk), and why he still considers rock music to be “the underdog.”
Take me back to 2003, and Green Day’s headspace when you went into the studio to record American Idiot. After the ’90s and Warning, did you see American Idiot as the start of Green Day 2.0?
When we did Warning, we were definitely trying to do something different from [our] sound than we’d ever done before. It was a little bit more folky, a lot more acoustic guitar. That was foreshadowing for what would end up becoming American Idiot. We had a studio that we were going into every day in Oakland called [Studio] 880, and we just started to experiment in there. We were like the inmates running the asylum for months. Then we came upon doing a concept record that was right in the middle of the George Bush administration and the war in Iraq.
To what extent when you went in were you planning on this being a more political record? Or did that emerge organically during your sessions and your experimentation?
When I wrote the song “American Idiot” is when. It was just such a bold statement – bolder than I had ever said before politically. When we started [recording], we just talked about the song and we were all on the same page. It felt dangerous and risky and fun at the same time, if that’s even possible. We all agreed that this was the right way to go. And then with that came songs like “Holiday.”
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It’s hard to imagine a single that’s more in your face than “American Idiot,” in both sound and subject matter. Was there any resistance from your team or your label about that being the lead single?
No, I didn’t feel like there was any resistance. We felt empowered when we did the demo and when we recorded it. I don’t think we really worried about anything – it gave us a bit more swagger, to be honest, because we knew that we were sitting on a song that we really believed in. The label, they were great. There was no blowback from them at all.
“American Idiot” has taken on this second life – you’ve called out President Trump a number of times when performing that song in recent years. Did you ever think when you were making it that it would end up being a living document, and that the ills it documented would persist long after the Bush era?
I don’t really know what I thought, like what kind of legs that that song was gonna have. I remember when Trump got into office, that song was getting played a lot. The first trip that he took to England, [a British social media campaign was] trying to get “American Idiot” to go No. 1. I think it got to number two. [Laughs.] When the song first came out, I think we were like, “This could blow up in our faces, but who cares? We’ve said something that we really felt strongly about.” Then, as the record kept getting bigger and bigger, I just said, “Man, we really made something that is special that’s gonna stand the test of time.”
A political record and tackling some of these themes would have been challenging enough, but then you had the rock opera concept and story on top of it. Why was that narrative structure the right way to present this subject matter?
It made the record personal. It was coming from the heart. And then, it was also not just finger pointing, but questioning my own ignorance, at the same time, and posing the questions to myself. The one thing about a lot of punk-rock bands that are political, it seems that they come across as politicians. For me, it was just — the one thing we all have in common is that we’re living the human experience. So I wanted the songs to come from the heart as much as they came from the head.
Green Day has always had a young fan base, and American Idiot was a huge touchstone for so many kids who were going through adolescence and waking up to the news and current events. This might have been the first political record they ever got. How did you feel about Green Day’s role in the political awakening of Millennials?
9/11 defined a generation in the same way that the Vietnam War defined a generation. It was just that sort of era of fear that every generation has to endure. When the Twin Towers fell down, it created a generation of paranoia. Looking back, three years after 9/11, a lot of people when they heard the music [on American Idiot], [there was] this push back [happening] and [we] created like a soundtrack for that push back.
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“American Idiot” and “Holiday” were very political – and very successful – singles. But American Idiot spawned two even bigger, less politically oriented singles: “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” How do these pop crossover moments fit into the album as a whole?
“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” became a part of the narrative of the record, because [it’s what the] Jesus of Suburbia character was going through. That song, it comes across as someone growing up that feels very self-righteous, until they come across into the real world and find [themselves] in a very lonely place. I wrote that song when I was spending time in New York. I was by myself, and not knowing really anything about New York, I just sort of dropped myself right into the Lower East Side. I honestly didn’t know where I was at. I have a horrible sense of direction. That that song is exactly that: It’s about my horrible sense of direction.
Green Day was a defining alt-rock band of the ’90s. Then, as you’re in the studio recording American Idiot, there’s a new wave of alt-rock popping up, whether it’s what’s happening on New York’s Lower East Side with The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or the next generation of pop-punk bands who were dominating Warped Tour. Was what was going on in alt-rock percolating through to you when you were in the studio or were you sealed off?
For us, power-pop or whatever, we just wanted to bring it to a new level. A lot of that music at that time, as far as the pop-punk stuff was, it just became, like, commercial on purpose. [Laughs.] The pop-punk stuff, it just seemed trivial. It seemed really generic, and I didn’t really like it at all. The subject matter was just really shallow. It felt paint by numbers. The New York stuff that was going on, where it was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes and Interpol, felt very real to me — because it felt like a scene, and it felt like people were very serious about making music. I found that to be really inspiring.
You’re playing American Idiot and Dookie all the way through this summer to celebrate their respective 20th and 30th anniversaries. As you’ve revisited American Idiot ahead of that tour, what has stood out to you?
American Idiot was sort of this unicorn that [during its album cycle] we were like, “OK, let’s get past this and move on.” We played it in its entirety at the Fillmore [in San Francisco] the other night. Revisiting it was cathartic, for lack of a better cliché. Playing songs like “Extraordinary Girl” and “Whatsername,” there were times on stage where I was getting choked up because it was bringing me back the feeling that I had at that time, that I was revisiting for the first time in 20 years. I had a great sense of pride and I was sort of humbled by the experience.
More and more artists are doing tours where they play classic albums in full. Why is that an effective way to connect with fans?
Playing it the other night at the Fillmore, just looking at people’s faces, there were people that were crying. I saw this one person that was in the crowd that was transgender, and I could see the tears coming out. I realized how far we’ve come. Green Day has been a space for people to feel a connection with people that are kindred spirits. It was really heavy to see people just sort of – we’re playing “Homecoming” and “Whatsername” and “Are We The Waiting” and people [are] just crying. I was kind of taken aback by it. I think it’s great that bands are revisiting their albums, because these are works of art. [Weezer’s] Blue Album is a work of art, just as much as Tommy is a work of art. This sounds really pretentious, but it’s like when an orchestra is playing Mozart. I think rock music is just as important.
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One of the most adventurous parts of American Idiot is “Jesus of Suburbia,” the five-part, nine-minute epic. It’s still a fan favorite. Did you have any doubts when putting that song together – and has its longevity surprised you?
“Jesus of Suburbia,” that’s one of my proudest moments for Green Day. I remember the first time that we ever played it [in July 2004]. We were rehearsing at the Olympic Auditorium down in Los Angeles. We were really tight. We were playing every day and we thought, “Hey, let’s do a cheap ticket, people can come see us play.” That was the first time that we played it in front of people. They kind of couldn’t believe what we had done. It was this nine-minute epic, where people were used to our two-and-a-half, three-minute songs. The reaction was so positive in a way where people just couldn’t believe what they were hearing. I’m really proud of that song and how it was inspired by The Who and we just got to have that moment.
We don’t see rock smashes quite like American Idiot these days. What are your thoughts about the arc of rock as a mainstream genre – and how it fits into the pop landscape – since American Idiot came out?
There’s a lot of great rock music that’s out right now. And I think, in a way, it’s more popular than ever. You see these festivals that are popping up all over America. Something like Aftershock [in Sacramento] – they’re huge! Like, 50,000 people are coming out. To me, that feels like rock is bigger than it’s ever been, especially in the last 10 years. It just doesn’t get covered.
But in a way, rock music has always been underground and the underdog, as far as what goes on in the pop world. It’s always been that way. It’s been that way, really, since 1948.
This week, Billboard is publishing a series of lists and articles celebrating the music of 20 years ago. Our 2004 Week continues here as we check in with one of the artists who defined mainstream country music 20 years ago: Gretchen Wilson, whose smash hit “Redneck Woman” and subsequent best-selling Here for the Party album made her the freshest and most exciting new artist in Nashville.
Two decades have elapsed since Gretchen Wilson set fire to country music’s staid mainstream landscape in 2004 with her debut single, “Redneck Woman.”
The song’s lyrics — highlighting women who prefer beer to champagne, and who leave Christmas lights hanging year-round — vividly detailed a lifestyle familiar to millions of female country music fans. It was also a lifestyle that Wilson didn’t see or hear depicted among the female artists on country radio and in music videos in the early ’00s. So, Wilson teamed with Big & Rich singer-songwriter John Rich to craft a song that celebrated anti-“Barbie doll type” women.
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“I remember sitting down and saying, ‘I can’t really relate to what I’m seeing on CMT, GAC, all the popular music video channels, and this is not real life,’” Wilson recalls to Billboard. “That’s kind of the mindset we had that day. It was like, ‘If I’m not that, then what am I?’ And the best thing I could come up with was, ‘I’m just a regular ole redneck woman.’ That’s a really pivotal moment, just writing that song that I knew was uniquely me. But I also knew, from a songwriter’s standpoint, it was about as honest as I could get. I knew at the same time that it was going to speak to so many women that were feeling frustrated just like I was.”
“Redneck Woman” was a true slice-of-life for Wilson, who was born to a teenage mother and grew up in Pocahontas, Illinois, a town with a population of less than 1,000 people. Wilson grew up in trailer parks, and was working in local bars as a cook by age 14. She moved to Nashville in 1996 and spent much of her 20s singing on songwriters’ demos and performing in local bars. By the time she signed with Epic Records in 2003 and earned her breakout hit with “Redneck Woman,” Wilson was in her 30s and raising her own daughter.
Music fans instantly connected with “Redneck Woman,” calling radio stations and demanding that it be played. “Redneck Woman” was released in March 2004; by May, it had reached the penthouse of Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart (then-called Hot Country Singles & Tracks) and stayed there for five weeks. It proved a counterpoint to the smash pop crossovers of country artists like Shania Twain and Faith Hill, whose most commercially dominant years were already solidly in the rearview by the time Wilson’s breakthrough came around.
“I felt validated, but mostly with the fans, because radio put up quite a fight,” Wilson says of “Redneck Woman”’s success. “Radio was like, ‘Who is this white trash hillbilly chick coming at us with 13 cuss words in the first song?’ My argument at the time—and I had a valid argument, even though it was 20 years ago, before a lot of feminine movements had happened—my argument was, ‘I’m on the same record label as Montgomery Gentry, who just had a hit with ‘Hell Yeah’ [in 2003]. So, is this just because I’m a female and I can’t say ‘Hell Yeah’ in my song? So that kind of got ‘em, and they shut up real quick about that. But it was really the fans who called their local radio stations. They called and basically said ‘You will play this song or I’ll be switching to the other guy’s station.’”
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Those fans didn’t just call radio stations — they attended Wilson’s concerts in droves, holding up signs of support and telling Wilson how they identified with her no-frills, rough-around-the-edges persona. “A lot of ‘em would bring up Faith Hill rolling around in satin sheets in the [2000] video ‘Breathe,’” Wilson says of the contemporary country image that was prominent at the time, which some fans found difficult to relate to. “It’s a great song, no doubt. They were like, ‘I just don’t think I could stomach any more of that because who wakes up looking like that in the morning?’ People were so enthusiastic [about feeling represented by my music] that they would show up and they would have homemade t-shirts that said, ‘Redneck Girl,’ ‘Redneck Woman’ and ‘Redneck Grandma’ on them — representing three generations, sometimes four. It did feel very validating.”
In 2004, Wilson earned the Country Music Association’s Horizon Award (later renamed new artist of the year), and the following year, female vocalist of the year. “Redneck Woman” won Wilson a Grammy for best female country vocal performance, while Wilson’s debut album Here For the Party bowed at No. 1 on the Top Country Albums chart and was certified five-times Platinum by the RIAA. Three more singles from the album, “Here For the Party,” “When I Think About Cheatin’,” and “Homewrecker,” reached the top 5 on Hot Country Songs.
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Wilson’s success also helped elevate the MuzikMafia, an eclectic collective of artists (including Wilson) founded in 2001, whichwas known for holding court with free-wheeling, hours-long shows at Nashville’s Pub of Love — all driven by creating an atmosphere of acceptance and support across a spectrum of sounds. Alongside Wilson and Big & Rich’s Rich and William “Big Kenny” Alphin, the group included ‘00s country fixtures like Cowboy Troy, James Otto, Shannon Lawson and Jon Nicholson.
“At the same time that we were being crazy, wild and having a party, the other stipulation was, ‘You got to be good,’” Wilson notes. “One of our mottos was that it doesn’t matter what you play. As long as you can play it well and hold an audience, we’re not going to tell you that you’re not country enough, or not rock n’ roll enough. You just got to be good. That’s why the shows would go on for six or seven hours, just one person after another getting up there, because we were a group of talented friends coming to these parties. When you get 13, 14, 15 artists all wanting to play five or six songs apiece, that’s a long night of music.”
In 2004, as Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” dominated, other MuzikMafia artists also mounted breakthroughs. Big & Rich’s “Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)” rose to No. 11 on the Country Airplay chart. Otto released his debut album Days of Our Lives in 2004, while the following year, Cowboy Troy released the single “I Play Chicken with the Train” and his album Loco Motive. Together, the group broke through the polished, often pop-oriented sounds emanating from Nashville’s Music Row.
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After the blazing-hot popularity of Wilson and Big & Rich in 2004, the MuzikMafia’s rising tide slowly began to level out. Big & Rich earned a No. 1 on Hot Country Songs with “Lost in This Moment” in 2007, then went on hiatus as a duo in 2009 and each released solo projects (they reunited in 2011). Wilson’s sophomore album, 2005’s All Jacked Up, didn’t quite reach the same sales heights as her debut album, while the songs found more moderate success on radio (though the album, and 2007’s One of the Boys, both reached the pinnacle of Billboard’s top country albums chart). Meanwhile, a new crop of female artists began making their own country chart strides in the mid-2000s, including Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood and Kellie Pickler (all of whom offered up polished, sparkly personas and pop-country sounds). Wilson’s own songs also helped pave the way for the independent-minded singer-songwriter Miranda Lambert, who earned her first top 10 hit on Hot Country Songs in 2008.
Scanning today’s country music landscape, however, Wilson doesn’t really see a modern-day parallel to what the MuzikMafia set out to do. “I would say the MuzikMafia was reminiscent of the early Outlaws, in a sense. I don’t think there’s been [anything like it since] — not to say that there won’t be, it could happen again — but it was definitely a movement and each one of us had our own position. I think maybe what made it successful is it didn’t get too big; it always stayed just a handful of us. It was a brotherhood and sisterhood, and we’re all just real close; it’s definitely a family.”
Earlier this year, Wilson teamed with Big & Rich and Cowboy Troy to launch their 20th anniversary celebration tour.
“It’s like walking right back out onto a stage that I never left,” she says of the shows. “Every time I look over at John, he’s grinning from ear to ear. Every time I look at Kenny, he’s being Kenny, which is crazy, throwing his arms up in the air — anytime you look at Kenny, you just got to be ready for anything that might be coming at you. But it’s been a lot of fun.”
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In addition to the current tour, Wilson shares that there is new music on the way: “I’ve got a song that I’m going to try to finish up by the end of this month, and I’m hoping to have it circulating at least by the first couple of weeks in May. I can tell you that it’s kind of like [Wilson’s 2005-released single] ‘Homewrecker’ part two. It’s kind of a follow up on that kind of vibe.”
Wilson says she’s always thoughtful about releasing songs that showcase different facets of her artistry, while maintaining the rowdy songs fans have come to expect.
“There are songs I’ve written that are very personal, more ballady with a softer edge. When people go look me up and find songs from me, they are looking for the hard edge. They’re looking for that girl on a four-wheeler that’s guzzling Jack Daniels barefooted,” she says. “But definitely, there are different shades to my personality and songwriting and it’s pretty complex.”
Still, there’s a reason that Wilson felt “Redneck Woman” was true to who she is. “There’s always going to be that layer of me that is that girl that they expect to see,” she explains. “And I’m barefooted, right now, sitting outside on the back porch watching the train go by in the distance. So, after all these years, I haven’t really changed too much.”
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