Green Day To Include Amy Winehouse Tribute On New Album
Green Day wrote nearly 40 songs for their upcoming album trilogy, and one of the songs to make the cut (on November 13’s ¡Dos!) is “Amy”, a solemn ballad written in tribute to Amy Winehouse.
Written after hearing of Winehouse’s death in July 2011, Billie Joe Armstrong penned the song in 20 minutes. “I felt like there was this connection with R&B of the past and R&B of the present,” he tells Billboard in the band’s cover story. “What she did, her knowledge of old music and old Motown, it’s something in the chain of music that is gone forever. She never got the help she needed. I know what it’s like to go down a really dark path and I had really good people around me to help me survive. Maybe that’s why I was able to relate to it.”
There’s plenty more tidbits about what to expect on each album, as well as their marketing plan regarding the release of videos and live performances — jump below for details!
“We’re presenting selections of songs so everyone knows there are three albums,” Warner Brothers co-President Livia Tortella says of the marketing plan for Green Day’s first trilogy. “Once the consumer campaign starts and the music gets out, it will make a ton of sense. We’ll give everything its own time in the sun.”
The trilogy should not be considered three separate albums, but more like different chapters of the same book. Says Armstrong, “The first album is getting the party started, the second album is the party happening and the depths of hell in the party, and the third one is trying to pick up the pieces, self-reflection, and the hangover.”
With ¡Uno! (September 25), expect three music videos from the first album in the trilogy, with the next single released mid-August. The band will perform a few dates in Europe before heading back to the States to appear at the iHeartRadio festival in Las Vegas. A performance at the MTV Video Awards on September 6 looks likely as well.
As for ¡Dos! (November 13), the first music video for the second LP in the series will be released mid-September (the same time around ¡ Uno!‘s release). The band will depart on a North American tour from November til January, with a possible performance at the American Music Awards. The LP will include songs like “Nightlife”, a party song inspired by “gangsta-leaning R&B”; the pop-driven “Stray Heart” with references to “soul and Carolina beach music”; and closing track “Amy”, which the band premiered live during their mini 2011 tour.
Green Day – “Amy” (Live)
For ¡Tre! (January 15), the two planned documentaries — one covering the last two years of the band creating this album, the other on their pre-Dookie days — may be attached as a bonus for fans who order all three albums. Songs on the LP include “Brutal Love”, which combines soul, doo-wop, glam-rock and a string orchestra; “99 Revolutions”, a track inspired by the Occupy protests; and “Little Boy Named Train”, based on a true story about a woman born a hermaphrodite, but whose parents decided to cut off his penis. “His/her whole life, this person wanted to be acknowledged as a man,” Armstrong explains. “The parents wanted the child not to be identified as a boy or a girl, and the child didn’t really have a name — one week it’s Tigger, the other it’s Train… it happened to someone else, but there’s a little part of me I thought about when I wrote it… kind autobiographical.”
Here here to rock out to the group’s new single “Oh Love”, which premiered earlier today.
[Via ONTD]
