Green Day entered 2005 at the center of popular music for the second time in its career — but the first time in a decade. The legendary pop-punk trio had taken over rock music and MTV from 1994-95 with its RIAA diamond-certified debut album Dookie, and had fortified their status as alt-rock fixtures in the years since, but with a growing distance both from the mainstream and within the band itself. Then, in 2004, Mike Dirnt, Tré Cool and Billie Joe Armstrong decided to recommit to one another and go for the stadium rock brass ring with the most ambitious album of their career: American Idiot, which topped the Billboard 200, drew the band’s best reviews to date, and reasserted their rock stardom with its hard-charging, protest-minded title track.
In this week’s Vintage Pop Stardom episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast, host Andrew Unterberger is joined by Billboard features senior editor Eric Renner Brown to preview our upcoming 2005 Week — with 2005-themed content coming all next week (Apr. 14-18) on Billboard.com — with a look back at the year in Green Day. We pick up right after the release of American Idiot and its lead single, when the trio springboarded from that initial comeback moment to the biggest pop hits, the biggest videos and the biggest live shows of its career — ending the year as once again the biggest rock band in the world, and one of the biggest pop acts as well.
Along the way, we ask all the big questions about Green Day during this peak run: What made the trio such a central band to rock music in the era of emo and stadium indie? Is there really enough of a plot to American Idiot to consider it a rock opera? Could “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” withstand such an insane amount of overplay? Did the “Wake Me Up When September Ends” video live up to the hype? Why has Green Day never taken a big swing like this again over the last 20 years? And finally: Was this the greatest year of pop stardom that any rock band had in the 2000s?
Check it out above — along with a YouTube playlist of some of the most important moments from Green Day’s 2005, all of which are discussed in the podcast — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for weekly discussions every Thursday about all things related to pop stardom!
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The post “Was Green Day’s 2005 the Greatest Pop Year for a 2000s Rock Band?” by Andrew Unterberger was published on 04/10/2025 by www.billboard.com