10 Definitive Rock Albums Of The 2000s

By the time Green Day reached the '00s, they were practically ancient by pop punk standards. The days of Dookie had given way to more interesting bands like Blink 182 and Sum 41, and the folksy sounds of Warning weren't going to cut it with the Warped Tour crowd. Green Day might have been yesterday's news, but all those years of playing turned them into a rock and roll powerhouse on American Idiot.

Taking inspiration from the backwards politics of the Bush administration, Billie Joe Armstrong constructed this album as a direct retort to his government at the time, sculpting a rock opera centered around a bunch of teenagers trying to make sense of their lives in the '00s. As much as some pop punk bands may have been about the 3 minute single, the strongest parts of this album are where the band take time to expand their vision, with songs bleeding into each other like Give Me Novocaine and She's A Rebel, while also finding time to weave in songs that hit a little closer to the bone like Wake Me Up When September Ends or Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

And even if there were some bigger names in pop punk around this time, no one was going to be able to touch something like Jesus or Suburbia or Homecoming, both colossal 9 minute epics which had the band transitioning in and out of different musical fragments on a dime. Green Day may have been looking to get back to their roots, but American Idiot was more than just a good rock and roll album. This made them the kings of the pop punk movement and every other band that came after them had this album as the benchmark to beat.