Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong covers Kim Wilde's 1981 hit 'Kids in America' in latest 'No Fun Mondays'
Billie Joe Armstrong has shared his latest performance on his quarantine series 'No Fun Mondays' with a cover of Kim Wilde's 1981 hit, 'Kids in America'.
The Green Day frontman said on the band's YouTube page, "This week's No Fun Mondays is dedicated to the one, the only, Mike Dirnt", and wished the bassist and bandmate of over two decades a happy birthday. He added, "Play this one loud just for him."
In the video we see an animated unicorn bassist jamming along to the music while a hand writes the lyrics on a notebook in a green sharpie. The song gets a power-pop rendition with richly recorded sound quality as the song builds with distortion guitars.
The vocalist also added that Wilde's song was later covered by the punk rock band, The Muffs, whose version appeared on the soundtrack to 'Clueless', the coming-of-age teen comedy film which released in 1995.
After The Muff's singer-guitarist Kim Shattuck died in October at age 56 from complications of ALS, Armstrong praised her as a major influence on his work.
"She was one of my favorite songwriters," he wrote on Instagram. "When we recorded 'Dookie', we listened to the first The Muffs record constantly. We will hear that rock n roll scream from heaven," he said.
Armstrong has been keeping fans updated with music during the coronavirus pandemic and has already released several covers for 'No Fun Mondays'. His first video was 'I Think We're Alone Now' which was originally recorded in the ‘60s by Tommy James and the Shondells and then turned into a mega-hit once more in the '80s by Tiffany.
Later covers by Armstrong included 'Manic Monday' (with an appearance from the original singer herself, Susanna Hoffs), 'Corpus Christi', 'That Thing You Do!', 'War Stories' and more.
Green Day released its latest album 'Father of All...' in February, but it seems Armstrong is already working on the band's next project, with a few new songs already written, according to Kerrang!.
He said, "I had all these melodies in my head, so I wrote, like, six songs since all of this has been going on." He added, "I don't know when I can get together with Mike and Tré, but I told them to make sure that they’re quarantined for now, and then I hope down the road we can get back in the studio with [Father Of All… producer] Butch Walker."