American Idiot, Green Day
In 1994, punk trio Green Day released its major-label debut, Dookie. With catchy punk-pop ditties like “Basket Case” and “When I Come Around,” the album blew up, making Green Day instant radio stars. But the next decade saw increasing tension and friction among the band members, the release of tepid albums like 1997′s Nimrod and an entire album’s worth of master tapes stolen out of the band’s studio. But the theft of that stillborn album lit the spark that would become their comeback: instead of attempting to re-create it, the band embarked on a rock opera. An angry, political rock opera about the decline of America, which dropped about a month before George W. Bush was re-elected, American Idiot astonishingly worked and became a massive hit — allowing a whole new bunch of disaffected, frustrated, jittery teenagers to discover the band. And all those old disaffected, frustrated, jittery teenagers, who had been through four adult years of insanity and were about to experience another four, rediscovered the band too.
