When the NFL booked Green Day to open Super Bowl LX, it was never likely going to be a quiet jog through the back catalog. This is a band whose greatest hit effectively opens by portraying a nation in hysterical freefall, and has been handed a warming-up role for what’s often regarded as the most tightly scripted broadcast in American television. I use ‘scripted’ carefully.

So yes, the obvious question is hanging in the air like a power chord: will American Idiot survive the NFL standards department intact?

Green Day’s relationship with politics is not a late-career hobby, unlike coffee. The song that made them a stadium act doubled as a protest banner, first aimed at the George W. Bush era and later repurposed with surgical precision. In recent tours, Billie Joe Armstrong has tweaked the lyrics to reflect modern targets – hello, Trump-blinkered MAGA – a habit that has reliably sent crowds into delirium and free-speech-as-long-as-we-agree cable-news panels into meltdown.

That history is why their Super Bowl booking immediately felt combustible. The league wants noise, energy and, yes, maybe some nostalgia. Green Day brings all three, with an asterisk. They also have a habit of saying exactly what they think when a microphone is nearby. Is that what the NFL authorities were hoping for given Taylor wasn’t up for it?

What is Green Day’s setlist for Super Bowl LX?

Once confirmed, the setlist for the opening ceremony will appear here, but in the meantime, let’s speculate.

I’m expecting Green Day to aim to compress three decades of rebellion into a carefully engineered run. I’d go for an explosive opener such as American Idiot or Holiday to jolt the stadium awake, a mid-set crowd unifier like Basket Case or Boulevard of Broken Dreams, and a closing uplifting pivot to Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).

The intrigue, of course, will not be so much about what they play but how they play it, and what lyrics Armstrong goes for.

Green Day, Trump and censorship

The political temperature around the game has not cooled things down. Donald Trump has already announced he is skipping the trip, publicly dismissing the artist lineup as “terrible.” That alone has turned the opening ceremony into something more than a polite pregame playlist. If he doesn’t u-turn on that decision, he’ll always have his Truth Social to share his views in real-time.

Will the NFL really try to muzzle a band whose entire brand is controlled chaos? A full lyrical rewrite seems unlikely. A strategically shortened set, or a carefully chosen song order, feels more plausible. Expect crowd-pleasers, expect volume, and expect at least one moment that has the broadcast-delay guy considering what the best play is.

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