Redundant is the third single and fourth overall track from Green Day's fifth studio album "Nimrod" on April 27, 1998. Despite the song not getting much attention when first released, it was featured on the A-side of the Australian release of "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)," allowing the song to chart there.
Song Meaning
Like "The Grouch," Billie Joe's wife Adrienne Armstrong inspired the track. The song looks into two people who been in a relationship for a very long time and while they still love each other, everything they do is redundant. It talks about how the beginning of a relationship is exciting but everything you do with each other slowly loses value over time, eventually become just a normal routine in everyday life. Due to the two somewhat taking each other for granted, their love is still genuine, but no longer does it hold any weight.
Lyrics
[Verse 1]
We're living in repetition
Content in the same old shtick again
Now the routine's turning to contention
Like a production line going a over and over and over, roller coaster
[Chorus]
Now I cannot speak, I've lost my voice
I'm speechless and redundant
'Cause "I love you"'s not enough
I'm lost for words
[Verse 2]
Choreographed and lack of passion
Prototypes of what we were
Went full circle 'til I'm nauseous
Taken for granted, now I've wasted and faked it, ate it, now I hate it
'Cause I cannot speak, I've lost my voice
I'm speechless and redundant
'Cause "I love you"'s not enough
I'm lost for words
[Interlude]
[Chorus]
Now I cannot speak, I've lost my voice
I'm speechless and redundant
'Cause "I love you"'s not enough
I'm lost for words
Now I cannot speak, I've lost my voice
I'm speechless and redundant
'Cause "I love you"'s not enough
I'm lost for words
Music Video
The music video for Redundant features the band performing in the middle of a room with the camera remains static for the duration of the whole video, and features several people performing tasks during the whole video.
- A newspaper is thrown from offscreen.
- A woman stretches her arms and yawns, and then collects the paper and leaves.
- Someone takes a painting off of a wall and replaces it with a new one, then someone else comes in and replaces that painting with the one that's just been replaced.
- A young girl walks from the left side of the screen, places a box on the coffee table next to the couch, and then climbs out of a window.
- A man in a green suit jacket walks around, picks up the box from the coffee table and leaves.
- A man in a cowboy hat walks around.
- A woman in a bright red dress removes her dress and then walks away in nothing but her bra and underwear.
- A balding man comes in, puts on a pair of trousers, then leaves.
- A woman with a large pot and a plant walks around.
- A man and a girl walk towards a couch and begin making out.
- A man is vacuuming.
- A young girl in a skirt comes in through a window, looks around, and leaves.
The activity peaks near the middle of the video and declines near the end. Tré and Mike leave, but Billie Joe takes the newspaper before the woman can reach it, causing her to scream, and in some aspect, breaking the "routine".