Why I take forever writing lyrics...

Green Day's new album 21st Century Breakdown features the following rather odd verse:

Raise your hands now to testify
Your confession will be crucified
You're a sacrificial suicide
Like a dog that's been sodomized
- East Jesus Nowhere

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, yes, the song is an anti-Christian rant, and so perhaps I was never going to like it. Actually no, I'm very sure that's not the case, I can dig an anti-Christian rant if it's done well, there are plenty of Christians worth ranting about. What I have a problem with, is the random use of words that sound aggressive and meaningful but actually say nothing.

How do you crucify a confession? After someone's said something confessional, is it then somehow nailed to a cross? What happens when a confession dies, exactly? Does it do anything? It can't even be metaphoric - what on earth can happen to a confession that's *like being crucified*?

Or "sacrificial suicide" - what on earth is one of those? Someone who kills themselves as a ritual offering to someone? And how is *anything* like a dog that has been sodomized? I literally can't come up with anything that you could compare that to, especially not something that you could also say is a "sacrificial suicide", and a "crucified confession."

For those of you saying "you're not meant to take it seriously", well... alright, everyone uses creative imagery in lyrics, I would never suggest they don't. I didn't mean anything specific, for instance, by "you've taken to a circle in the middle of the night" in Amanda - I was sort of vaguely thinking of all those scenes of the teenage witches in The Crucible, but people can do whatever they like with that line. Similarly, when Noel Gallagher wrote "her soul slides away" in Don't Look Back in Anger, I'm sure he was well aware that a soul can't slide. But there's a huge difference between those lyrics and Green Day's - when most songs use creative imagery to get a point across, you can at least see what they were driving at, get a sense of what the lyric is trying to convey. But for the words of East Jesus Nowhere... I've just got no clue. Ok, so you're vaguely upset about something vaguely religious. Cool. But how hard is it to be just a bit more articulate than that?

The best part about it is, whether or not the words have any meaning at all, thousands of people just slightly younger than me this summer will raise their hands and yell them along with Green Day while they're on tour, and in that moment, feel like the band has captured their angst and anger toward churches perfectly. But why? What does it mean? "like a dog that has been sodomized..." Am I just old before my time, and don't get what music is for? Don't get me wrong, I've had more than my share of those really great connected concert moments, singing Final Straw along with two thousand other angry Democrats at an R.E.M. gig in 2004 just after Bush won the election was something I won't easily forget. But even then... those words actually meant something. I don't think Green Day's do.

Oh, and for anyone saying "Green Day aren't known for their biting social commentary and lyrical depth" - that would have been a fine thing to say about 5 years ago, but with the last two albums, they've repositioned themselves as a band that actually has something to say, and on American Idiot they geniunely did have a few things to say. But this time it just seems to have been a race to include the most angry sounding cliches possible.

So what do you think? Is it alright to get away with cool sounding, meaningless drivel?

I could go on ranting, but this all brought to mind a Fry and Laurie sketch from a few years ago that summarizes what I don't like about this in a much better and infinitely funnier way than I can. Watch and enjoy :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X3BJIAgkM8

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