10 Greatest Album Intros In Rock History

Green Day didn't really have the smoothest transition into the next decade. While Dookie had catapulted these pop punk brats to superstardom overnight, the weird genre hopping they did on albums like Nimrod and Warning left many hardened punk fans wondering if they had lost their way. Once you got ahold of American Idiot though, you got it: this wasn't pop punk anymore...this was pure rock and roll.

After losing the masters of what would have been their next album, Green Day came through with one of the most caustic rockers of the 21st century with this track, aiming their middle fingers firmly at the Bush administration for their shady practices. Compared to other acts coming around like Jet and The White Stripes, you were never getting anything this outspoken, with Billie Joe Armstrong pulling and pushing his band at just the right time to keep things rolling from start to finish.

While the single worked just fine, it got much more interesting once the record unfolded, cast as a modern update of the coming of age stories you'd find in records like Tommy by the Who. As such, American Idiot acts a mission statement of sorts, a call to arms for all of the teenagers who refuse to conform to the Orwellian-like future they see in front of them. It might not be the easiest of journeys to take, but when the alternatives are this dire, it's best to damn the torpedoes and plow ahead regardless.