Billie Joe Armstrong Shares Unearthed ‘I Get Around’ Cover in Tribute to Brian Wilson

Billie Joe Armstrong has paid tribute to Brian Wilson by sharing a cover of the Beach Boys’ 1964 classic “I Get Around.”

The Green Day guitarist and vocalist shared his rendition of the song on Instagram on Wednesday (June 12), hours after the news of Wilson’s passing broke. 

“Thank you Brian Wilson,” Armstrong wrote. “I recorded a cover of ‘I Get Around’ a few years ago.. never got to share it. One of my all time favorite songs ever.”

Originally released in May 1964 as the sole single from the Beach Boys’ sixth album, All Summer Long, “I Get Around” would become the group’s first song to reach No. 1 on the Hot 100, a feat they would achieve twice more in the ’60s – thanks to “Help Me, Rhonda” and “Good Vibrations” – and once in 1988 by way of “Kokomo.”

Armstrong’s rendition of “I Get Around” isn’t exactly a left-field choice for the musician, especially given the influence that many bands of the pop-punk genre have taken from the Beach Boys’ approach to music and songwriting. 

While Green Day’s 2009 track “Last of the American Girls” was noted as containing harmonies reminiscent of the Beach Boys, Wilson himself showed an ignorance toward the punk genre in 2015. “I never went for that. I never went for the fast kind of music,” he told The Guardian. 

Wilson passed away on June 11 at the age of 82, with his death inspiring countless tributes from musicians around the world. In the same vein as Armstrong, Sting honored Wilson’s legacy by performing a live rendition of 1966’s “God Only Knows.”

“Today, one of my heroes died, Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys,” Sting said during the encore of his Wednesday night concert in Rostock, Germany. “So I want to sing a song that I love.” Both Sting and Wilson had previously performed the same song together during a 2008 concert at Carnegie Hall.