10 Rock Music Acts That Went Dark (AND NAILED IT)

For as much as Billie Joe Armstrong probably loved Green Day's success in the early days, chances are he didn't anticipate all the baggage that came with it. As the band played to sell out crowds around the world, their hometown clubs wanted absolutely nothing to do with them, thinking they had sold out to big businesses and banned them from ever performing at their home club ever again. Life was a lot different out in the wild now, and Green Day had to let all that negative energy loose on Insomniac.

While the title was inspired by the sleepless nights that Billie was having after having to look after his son during his time off the road, you can tell that the band is on edge on every one of these tracks. From the opening notes of Armatage Shanks, this is a much more straightforward punk affair than Dookie, taking the tropes that they knew worked and putting more attitude into it, whether that means talking about meth heads on Geek Stink Breath or describing their own feelings of anxiety on a song like Panic Attack.

Even though the fans took kindly to the Dookie-adjacent sound of this record, Billie wasn't exactly the same kid that wrote songs like Basket Case. This was a man who saw his entire punk family turn his back on him, and this was the result of the band feeling lost in the world for the first time.