Latest Release
- JAN 19, 2024
- 15 Songs
- Insomniac · 1995
- Dookie · 1994
- American Idiot (Deluxe Edition) · 2004
- American Idiot · 2004
- Dookie · 1994
- American Idiot · 2004
- American Idiot (Deluxe Edition) · 2004
- 21st Century Breakdown (Deluxe Edition) · 2009
- Nimrod · 1997
- Dookie · 1994
Essential Albums
- Sometime in 2002, Green Day went into the studio to work on a new album they were tentatively calling Cigarettes and Valentines. The band was tired, cranky, low on ideas and morale. They’d already sold a zillion records, crisscrossed the world, and put out a greatest hits album (International Superhits!), something they’d never dreamed of in the days of playing warehouse shows in Berkeley—and arguably something no self-respecting punk band should do anyway. They talked about breaking up. And just like that, the masters for the album—which none of the members had felt all that strongly about to begin with—were stolen from the studio: Bad fortune, good opportunity. Released in 2004, American Idiot wasn’t quite a reincarnation for the band, but it was close. They’d been experimenting with polka music, salsa, dirty versions of Christmas songs, and, maybe most radically of all, not sounding angry all the time. In place of the compression that made their early albums so indelible came a strange new dream: Billie Joe Armstrong wanted to write something big and operatic. He wanted to write “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Weird as it sounds, it was more or less a logical next step. After all, the band was already playing the arenas—why not act like an arena-rock band? Anchored by two sprawling nine-minute song-suites (“Jesus of Suburbia,” “Homecoming”) and a loose unifying story, American Idiot wasn’t just their most musically varied album (it upped their quotient of military marches, glockenspiel, and Celtic-sounding ballads by 100%), but their most emotionally varied one, too, by turns bratty (“American Idiot”), anthemic (“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”), goofy (“She’s a Rebel”), and reflective (“Wake Me Up When September Ends”), sometimes all in the space of the same song. And where they’d always been political in a casual, lowercase way, here they made their message bolder, channeling their frustrations toward a host of American infirmities, from widening class inequality to the ascendance of religious evangelism to the country’s looping preoccupation with war. In case it wasn’t clear where the band was coming from, Armstrong often performed the title track wearing a novelty mask of George W. Bush. Most of all, American Idiot marked the moment when Green Day truly embraced their status as old-fashioned rock stars: ambitious, anthemic, a little clunky, but committed to the big ideas. The album became their best-selling since Dookie and was famously adapted for the distinctly un-punk setting of Broadway—a leap no band of their distinctly subcultural origins had ever really made before. In other words, here was a band by and for losers, finally accepting that they’d won.
Artist Playlists
- These hits transformed a trio of Berkeley teens into pop-punk icons.
- The pop-punks capture scenes of absurdity and introspection.
- Three power chords and a dash of eyeliner–what more do you need?
- The pop-punk giants take on DJs, The Kinks and garage rock.
- These radio-ready hits and indie classics shaped a punk trio's iconic sound.
- Grab the mic and sing along with some of their biggest hits.
More To Hear
- A look at the more unfamiliar parts of their musical orbit.
- The bands drop New Music Daily premieres, reveal a joint tour.
- Green Day, Weezer, and Fall Out Boy discuss their joint tour.
- Green Day, Blur, and Mabel all feature.
More To See
About Green Day
Though originally hailed as a trio of punk revivalists, Green Day is now one of rock’s sturdiest institutions, a band known for embracing the three-chords-and-a-head-rush excitement that runs through ’50s rockabilly and ’60s garage, ’80s New Wave and ’90s skate punk. Formed in the late ’80s in San Francisco’s East Bay, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees—singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tré Cool, the latter of whom replaced drummer John Kiffmeyer early on—broke through in 1994 with the landmark Dookie. Singles such as “Basket Case” helped Green Day become one of the preeminent forces in ’90s rock, presaging a wave of artists (including Rancid, NOFX, and blink-182) that merged the energy of punk with the affability of pop. From Dookie on, the band has remained remarkably consistent, peppering albums with hints of Beatles-esque pop (“Warning”), churning rock anthems (“Boulevard of Broken Dreams”), and radio-ready ballads (“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends”). Even when Green Day goes big (the rock-operatic scope of 2004’s American Idiot and 2009’s 21st Century Breakdown) or expands its sound (2020’s peppy, garage-rock-leaning Father of All M***********s), the music is ambitious while staying catchy and concise. Even punk throwbacks such as 2024’s Saviors stick to the same premise: Green Day has always believed that making clever, accessible music is the best way to motivate people politically and emotionally. In other words, the band’s success is a microcosm of alternative music’s migration into the mainstream: Instead of erasing arena rock, Green Day reinvented it.
- ORIGIN
- East Bay, CA, United States
- FORMED
- 1989
- GENRE
- Alternative