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Green Day

"Oh Love"

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August 2, 2012

The only politics in the first single from Green Day's imminent three-album blitz are the sexually urgent kind, and the sole whiff of opera comes when Billie Joe Armstrong sings, "Oh love/ Won’t you rain on me tonight?" – a neat allusion to the climax of the Who's Quadrophenia. Otherwise, this song is a tight, addicting bundle of pop-hook class and crunchy-punk fundamentals. The entire first verse is Armstrong singing like the stark solo John Lennon – just a bright, strident vocal and crisply strummed guitar. But when Armstrong’s bandmates fall in around him, Green Day sound the way you originally loved ’em, and refreshed: heavier and hardened from their time in the trenches but back in the garage, ready for rapture.

Listen to "Oh Love":

Related
Q&A: Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong on Green Day's Album Trilogy

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