10 Great Rock Songs Inspired By Death
4. Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day
Pop punk was never a genre that you had to think too much about. From the moment that you heard something like All the Small Things or Fat Lip, this was the kind of bratty genre that was supposed to provide a decent soundtrack to a suburban pool party than actually talk about their feelings. The kings of pop punk had grown up by this point though, and Green Day had some feelings to let out towards the back half of American Idiot.
Even though this song is completely removed from the storyline of the rock opera, Wake Me Up When September Ends was a song that Billie Joe Armstrong needed to get out of his system. Still having some pent up feelings about his father's passing when he was a child, this is almost like Billie writing the eulogy that he never got to make, as he looks back at how long it's been and how much it pains him to grow up without that father figure in his life.
The rest of the world might be going by day after day, but he'll never forget that heartbroken kid he was all those years ago, crying in his bedroom and telling his mom to wake him up at the end of September so he could forget everything that happened. It hasn't been lost on Billie Joe either, who occasionally has to force back tears when playing the song live to this day. Time might make us grow stronger, but these are the kind of wounds that will always leave a scar.