10 Rock Bands That Saved Their Careers With One Album

In the early '00s, Green Day were facing the one thing that all pop punk bands have to deal with at some point: growing up. As much as their signature bratty angst may have boded well back in the days of Dookie, hearing them go for classic rock territory on albums like Warning left a lot of their core audience a bit cold. Billie Joe wanted to return to form, only for the tapes to go missing right as they were starting to mix it.

After initially having the idea for a punkier record titled Cigarettes and Valentines, the band scrapped it once the tapes went missing and decided to focus on something a lot more bombastic, with Billie taking inspiration from the modern political climate in '00s climate. In an era when most artists were too scared to tackle George Bush's questionable practices, Green Day came out with all guns blazing on American Idiot, creating a pseudo concept record that followed the lives of kids trying to make sense of the world that they're being brought up in.

For as polarizing as this sounds like on paper, the gamble turned into one of Green Day's biggest successes of their career, almost eclipsing Dookie in terms of cultural relevance and giving them even more timeless songs like the title track and Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Just because you've grown up doesn't mean you don't still have something to say, and Green Day had the tunes that could get into any jaded punk's heart on here.