Suburban American Punks and the Musical Rhetoric of Green Day's “Jesus of Suburbia”

Abstract

This essay examines Green Day's “Jesus of Suburbia” as an artifact and reflection of suburban American punk culture. It looks at how music, lyrics, and the ethos of the performer interact to create a message that fostered identification between speaker and audience by using Sellnow and Sellnow's Langer-based illusion of life perspective. In this case it was found that music can be seen as an effective tool for expressing the suburban punk experience due to its ability to convey both linguistic and emotional content.

Keywords:

• Music
• Punk
• Rhetoric
• Suburban

Notes

Sellnow & Sellnow (2001).

^a Instruments in the instrumentation section are provided only as examples of instruments played in a stereotypical manner. The intensity and release patterns of instrumentation are dependent upon how the instrument is played within a specific piece of music.