Watch Green Day Play “Walking Contradiction” For The First Time In 22 Years At London Pub Pop-Up Show
Green Day have big plans for 2024: A new album called Saviors in January and a massive stadium tour with the Smashing Pumpkins and Rancid in the summer. The band has already dropped the new singles “The American Dream Is Killing Me” and “Look Ma, No Brains!,” and they worked both tracks into their live shows before releasing the studio versions of the songs. But they’ve also been dusting off a lot of old classics that they haven’t played live in a long time. At the Las Vegas warm-up show before the When We Were Young festival, for example, Green Day started things off by playing Dookie in its entirety. And at a tiny secret London show last night, they brought back motherfucking “Walking Contradiction.”
For my money, “Walking Contradiction,” one of the singles from Green Day’s 1996 album Insomniac, is maybe one of the 10 best songs in the band’s long, distinguished history. It’s such a fucking banger. Before last night, Green Day hadn’t played “Walking Contradiction” live since a 2001 show in Dayton. According to Setlist.fm, the band has only played that song 12 times ever, which is wild to think about. The 12th time was last night.
Green Day played a 13-song acoustic set last night at the Marquis, a small pub in London. They teased the show on social media during the daytime, but this was a real last-minute thing. From the looks of things, the band played on the floor, with fans packed in all around them and more watching through the sidewalk windows. They livestreamed the whole thing on Instagram. Below, check out the video of them playing “Walking Contradiction,” the track’s great music video, and the setlist for last night’s show, via Setlist.fm.
TRACKLIST:
01 “Welcome To Paradise”
02 “Burnout”
03 “The American Dream Is Killing Me”
04 “Look Ma, No Brains!”
05 “Warning”
06 “Letterbomb”
07 “Christie Road”
08 “Basket Case”
09 “All By Myself”
10 “She”
11 “Walking Contradiction”
12 “Minority”
13 “American Idiot”
Imagine having so many great songs that you could just let “Warning” and “Walking Contradiction” quietly slip out of the rotation.
