Our Inquiry

Our names are Noah Balchin and Noah Giurizatto-Scott and we inquired into Green Day. There were three main questions we wanted answered. The first question was: how did Green Day's political views shape their songs? The second question was: Is it hypocritical for a band signed to a wealthy corporate record label to sing anti-corporate songs? Lastly, the third question was how did New Zealand fans react to an American band's political problems?

How we found our answers

To find the answers to our questions, we used MISO. MISO stands for Media, Interview, Survey, and Observation. We knew observation would not be viable as it required watching something like an interaction. So, we decided media for our first question, survey for our second question, and interview for our third question.

Media

Our first question: how did Green Day's political views shape their songs, was answered by the 3-2-1 technique. We found 3 websites, 2 videos, and 1 image to answer our question. Link to 3-2-1. We then summarised all our information we gathered and turned it into a thorough paragraph to fulfill our curiosities.

Summary of Media

Green Day's political views strongly influenced their songs, especially in albums like American Idiot and Warning. They used their music to express their strong opinions about war, September 11, minority groups, and presidents. Songs like Holiday clearly outlined what was happening in America, including the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Their music encouraged people worldwide to think for themselves and understand what was happening around the world.

Survey

For our second question, we couldn't just use media. We decided to interview our class to find the answer to our question: is it hypocritical for a band signed to a wealthy corporate record label to sing anti-corporate songs? Our survey provided some information about Green Day and who they are, and then asked that question. Survey here. We summarised our information below. Survey results here.

Summary of Survey

The results for the survey had a large range. We hypothesised that the mean would be around 8. The mean was 5.96 (2dp) and to our surprise, there were fourteen 5's. This proves that people think it's moderately hypocritical for a band signed to a wealthy corporate label to sing anti-corporate songs. This means Green Day face mixed opinions from listeners.

Interview

To answer my third question: how did New Zealanders react to an American band's political problems? We wanted to do something a little different. We interviewed Matt Balchin as he was in a band at the time of Green Day and it heavily influenced his life. A photo of his band is below.
Interview Link. We summarised the results of our interview below.

Summary of Interview

New Zealand fans reacted to an American band's political problems by becoming more aware of what was happening in America. They realised that not everything was perfect and rosy in the country they always believe to be a really cool and nice place to live. They started to understand what it was like for people of similar age to grow up in a corrupt government. Green Day singing those lyrics made them more aware of the problems going on in America.

This Website

This website is where we present the information we discovered throughout our inquiry into Green Day. To go to the next page, just click the link to the bottom of your screen that says "next".