Green Day Sample Joan Jett Cover of Gary Glitter Song, Donate Royalties to Anti-Sexual Assault Orgs
Green Day and their new song/video “Oh Yeah” features a very familiar sample coupled with some very familiar visuals.
The video’s theme focuses on social media/smartphone culture and shows a variety of different people recording videos with their phones and taking selfies. The song itself and where it gets its name samples Joan Jett‘s “Do You Wanna Touch Me (Oh Yeah),” which is a cover of the Gary Glitter song “Do You Wanna Touch Me?”
Green Day wrote in the video’s description on YouTube, “BTW we sampled a song from the great Joan Jett’s Bad Reputation album. One of the writers on that song is a total a–hole so we’re donating our royalties from this song to IJM and RAINN.”
IJM and RAINN are acronyms for the International Justice Mission and the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, two organizations known for fighting sex trafficking and supporting sexual assault survivors. Glitter, who co-wrote “Do You Wanna Touch Me?”, has a decades-long history involving possession of child pornography and numerous accounts and convictions of sexual abuse, assault, rape and attempted rape of children. He is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence in the U.K. for “attempted rape, four counts of indecent assault and one [count] of having sex with a girl under 13,” per the BBC.
In other words: Way to go, Green Day!
The band’s new album, Father of All…, which features “Oh Yeah!”, comes out February 7 and is available for pre-order through multiple outlets here.