10 Greatest Career Resurrections In Rock History
7. Green Day
Amid the influx of pop punk bands arriving in the early '00s, it's hard to believe how much Green Day was struggling around the same time. Compared to what we were getting from the likes of Sum 41 and Blink 182, it looked like the guys who had given us Dookie were way past their prime, looking to make folk records rather than the same raw rock and roll we were used to. That was just the beginning phase though...it was time to take punk to the opera.
During the recording of what was supposed to be their return to roots record, the final masters of Green Day's material were stolen, which caused them to rethink their approach to songwriting. Not wanting to rest on their laurels anymore, Billie Joe Armstrong decided to go even more ambitious for American Idiot, stringing together bits and pieces of songs to form 9 minute grandiose exercises that felt like what Queen would have done if they had gone through a prominent hardcore phase.
Arriving just in time for the second wave of pop punk, American Idiot positioned Green Day as the elderstatesmen of the genre, willing to speak out against injustice wherever they saw it. Take note other pop punk hopefuls...this is where you go once you grow up.