The Green Day frontman celebrated his coming out in 1995.
Billie Joe Armstrong has opened up about his bisexuality. “It’s pretty damn cool that people see me as a bisexual icon,” he told the magazine.People”. The Green Day frontman celebrated his coming out back in 1995. Since then, he has often spoken out against various forms of discrimination such as homophobia and transphobia.
Billie Joe Armstrong: “People are braver than they’ve ever been”
Society has already come a long way in this regard. “Even though it’s still kind of seen as taboo, people are braver than they’ve ever been. They are more open,” says Billie Joe Armstrong. He elaborated: “As a member of Generation X, I feel like a foundation was laid in the 1990s when we grew up. Men discovered more about being with other men and being bisexual. Maybe through statements from people like Kurt Cobain or me.”
Things are different now: “Sexuality is much more complex today. Sexuality is always much more than the traditional nuclear family.” Billie Joe Armstrong himself has been married to his wife Adrienne for 30 years. “There’s this very conventional side of me,” he said of his marriage. “But I’m just talking about sexuality: it’s not one or the other. And if someone says that, I think they’re not being honest with themselves.”
Green Day: Sexuality and gender on new album SAVIORS
The topic of sexuality, but also gender fluidity, is also taken up on the new album by his band Green Day, SAVIORS. According to Armstrong, the song “Bobby Sox” is “the nineties song we never wrote.” “I originally wrote it for my wife, but as it took shape I turned things around. Instead of just ‘Do you want to be my girlfriend?’ It’s now also called ‘Da you wanna be my boyfriend?’. So it’s a universal anthem.” In the song, the lines follow one after the other. Armstrong shared that the song moved a friend his age to tears. “Today it is more common to be LGBTQ and to be supported,” the Green Day singer and guitarist observes of the younger generation. “But for us it was only then that people were able to say such things openly.”