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Music Videos + Song Meanings: "Longview" by Green Day

20 years ago this video kicked a generation of burnouts in the ass and made us do something with our lives. Even if that "something" was getting off of the couch just long enough to tear it to shreds.



"It's about boredom, and smoking dope." – Billie Joe Armstrong
"I guess it was just living in the suburbs in a sort of shit town where you can't even pull in a good radio station. I was living in Rodeo, California, about 20 minutes outside of Oakland. There was nothing to do there, and it was a real boring place." – Billie Joe Armstrong in an interview in Guitar Legends magazine, May 2005.
"When Billie gave me a shuffle beat for Longview, I was frying on acid so hard. I was laying up against the wall with my bass lying on my lap. It just came to me. I said, "Billie, check this out. Isn't this the wackiest thing you've ever heard?" Later, it took me a long time to be able to play it, but it made sense when I was on drugs." – Mike Dirnt in Rolling Stonemagazine, 1995.