Why Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong grew to resent grunge: “Bastardised by lameness”To the outsider, grunge is easily stereotyped as being a slow, sluggish, and downbeat version of traditional rock ‘n’ roll. When Green Day entered the scene, they were the complete antithesis of that. In the late 1980s, grunge had already begun to emerge in Seattle as a new wave of punk’s raw, DIY charm. Funnily enough, however, Armstrong later recalled feeling a sense of disconnection from the scene around him, realising that grunge had become this bigger beast, while Green Day offered something that he worried people would turn away from. He’d been discussing ‘Longview’ – Armstrong’s startlingly honest exploration of his own laziness – when he reflected on the downsides to the entire movement.