Green Day's 'American Idiot' hits top of British charts in time for Trump's UK visit

USA TODAY

Welcome to a new kind of tension, President Trump.

As the U.S. leader began his first official visit to the United Kingdom Thursday, Green Day's 2004 punk-protest anthem "American Idiot" re-entered the British pop chart, where it currently sits at No. 18. It's faring considerably better over on the British Amazon best-seller list, where it's No. 1.

In the interest of historical accuracy, the song, which was released the summer before the 2004 election, and the album of the same name were actually inspired by the first term of President George W. Bush and his administration's rush to war with Iraq in 2003 over claims of weapons of mass destruction that were later debunked.

However, the song deals primarily with the issue of fascism in general, with lyrics like "don't want a nation under the new mania / And can you hear the sound of hysteria? / The subliminal mind-(expletive) America."

The U.K. campaign was spearheaded by a Twitter account called American Idiot for UK No. 1 When Trump Visits.

"Want to annoy Donald Trump and Nigel Farage this week?" it asked in a tweet posted earlier this week. "Buy a download of 'American Idiot' by Green Day, then keep streaming it, get watching the official video on Youtube, too. Keep doing that until midnight on Thursday. Why? Because if enough people in the U.K. do this, it will create enough sales to be the official No. 1 single on the very day Trump lands on U.K. soil."

"American Idiot" is far from the only high-profile protest on display: Trump was also greeted by the now famous Trump baby blimp as well as a crop circle bearing a crude message in Russian. The only problem: He may not see them because he's traveling between destinations by helicopter.

Representatives for Green Day did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.