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"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" | ||||
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Single by Green Day | ||||
from the album American Idiot | ||||
Released | November 29, 2004 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 4:22 | |||
Label | ||||
Composer(s) | Green Day | |||
Lyricist(s) | Billie Joe Armstrong | |||
Producer(s) |
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Green Day singles chronology | ||||
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Music video | ||||
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" on YouTube |
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is a song by American rock band Green Day. The power ballad is the fourth track from their seventh studio album American Idiot (2004). Reprise Records released "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as the second single from American Idiot on November 29, 2004. The song's lyrics were written by lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong, and the music was composed by the band. Production was handled by Rob Cavallo and Green Day.
The song speaks from the point of view of American Idiot's main character, "Jesus of Suburbia", and is a moderate midtempo song characterized by somber and bleak lyrics. This is in contrast to the previous track on the album, "Holiday", which illustrates Jesus of Suburbia's high of being in The City. MTV's Green Day Makes a Video described "Holiday" as a party, and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as the subsequent hangover.
The song was ranked number one on Rolling Stone 's Reader's Choice: Singles of the Decade list in 2009 and number 65 on the 100 Best Songs of the Decade list in the same year. It has sold over 2 million copies in the United States as of 2010. [1] The single peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Green Day's most successful song in the United States. The song was the ninth-highest-selling single of the 2000–2009 decade with worldwide sales exceeding 5 million copies. [2] As of 2021, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is the only song to win both the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year. It remains one of Green Day's signature songs.
After the low commercial performance of their sixth studio album, Warning (2000), [3] [4] the band began work on their seventh studio album, named Cigarettes and Valentines . During the production of the album, the demo recordings were stolen from the studio, which led Green Day to scrap the project and begin creating a new album from scratch. [5] The album, American Idiot, was released in 2004. [6] A punk rock concept album, American Idiot's narrative is focused on the story of a teenager (who refers to himself as the "Jesus of Suburbia") growing up in the United States under the presidency of George W. Bush during the Iraq War, criticizing both. [7]
Some of the albums songs were written when Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong lived alone in New York City for a few weeks in 2003, renting a small loft in the East Village of Manhattan with the goal of coming up with new song ideas. [8] During his time in the city, Armstrong wrote "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as a song about his time in New York City, about "feeling alone" and trying to take power from that fact. [9] In 2004, Armstrong showcased a demo of the song to their producer, Rob Cavallo. Upon hearing the song, Cavallo approved of the song and felt that it was going to be successful. [10] The final song was recorded at Ocean Way Recording. [11] The song is named after Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a painting by Gottfried Helnwein that depicts James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley together in a downtown diner, with the title reflecting their deaths. [12]
American Idiot was released on September 21, 2004; "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is the fourth song on the standard track list. [13] The song was released as the album's second single [14] on November 26, 2004. [15] A live recording of the song is included in the live album Bullet In A Bible, released in 2005. [16] The song was featured in American Idiot , the 2009 jukebox musical based on the album, and its 2010 cast recording. [17] [18] The song was later included in Green Day's greatest hits album God's Favorite Band (2017), [19] and will be included in a 20th anniversary reissue of American Idiot, alongside live and demo recordings of the song, releasing in 2024. [20]
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is an emo [21] hard rock [22] power ballad [21] with a duration of four minutes and twenty-two seconds. [21] The song begins immediately after the previous song in the album, "Holiday", with the introduction to "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" fading in during the song's final note. [23] The song's melody is relatively simple, primarily using the electric guitar feedback from the final note of "Holiday" alongside a progressing acoustic guitar, with Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool providing additional background rhythm. During the song's choruses, extra backing harmonies are present. As the song reaches its end, the melody grows increasingly dissonant. [13] The song follows the same chord progression as "Wonderwall" by Oasis, prompting Oasis' Noel Gallagher to criticize Green Day. [24]
Lyrically, the song reflects the current state of the Jesus of Suburbia after leaving behind his loved ones and soon becoming lonely, facing uncertainty about his future. [13] It is chronologically set one day after "Holiday", a song in which the Jesus of Suburbia initially celebrated his newfound freedom, though he later became discontented. [13] The song's lyrics are fairly straightforward in portraying this, opening with a verse about walking alone on a road, unknowing of where it goes. In the second verse, the Jesus of Suburbia speaks about a line that "divides [him] somewhere in [his] mind." According to Jordan Blum of PopMatters, some of the song's lyrics foreshadow the future of the Jesus of Suburbia, suggesting the protagonist's borderline personality disorder. [13]
The chorus reiterates his sense of isolation, saying "My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me / My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating", while also expressing a wish that "someone up there will find me", hoping to meet someone to overcome his loneliness, a theme that is resolved in later songs on the album. [13] Lora Kelly of the New York Times described the song as a "low point" in the Jesus of Suburbia's story and found the lyrics to resemble those of a musical performance. [21] Blum described the song’s lyrics as "linguistically modest" and argued that it demonstrates how a "simple structure and great songwriting can produce the best possible artistic statement." [13]
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" was named Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards of 2006. The song's broad appeal was demonstrated by its performance on several Billboard singles charts: it spent 14 weeks at number one on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart staying there for 38 weeks, 16 weeks at number one on the Modern Rock Tracks chart staying for 32 weeks, 11 weeks at number one on the Adult Top 40 chart staying at 44 weeks, and four weeks at number one on the Mainstream Top 40 staying there for 26 weeks. This was the first song to top the four charts altogether making this song a multi-chart success. It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 (the highest a Green Day song has ever charted on the Billboard Hot 100), staying there for five weeks behind 50 Cent's "Candy Shop". This was also the first Green Day song to reach the Adult Contemporary chart, peaking at number 30 and though "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" didn't chart on the Adult Contemporary, it did chart on its recurrent chart.[ citation needed ]
Outside the United States, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" charted strongly on many international charts. The song debuted and peaked at number five on the UK Singles Chart on the chart dated December 5, 2004, giving the band their third top 10 single in that country. It stayed in the UK top 100 for 29 weeks, becoming their longest-charting single at the time, but "Wake Me Up When September Ends" would log 32 weeks in the UK top 100 nearly a year later; it remains their second-longest stay on the UK chart. [25] In 2021, the British Phonographic Industry awarded the song a Platinum certification for sales and streams exceeding 600,000 units. The single was successful in Ireland, reaching number two in January 2005 on two occasions and totaling 23 weeks in the top 50. [26] It was their highest-peaking single there until "The Saints Are Coming" topped the Irish Singles Chart in 2006. Elsewhere in Europe, the song reached number one in the Czech Republic, number two in Sweden, and the top 10 in Austria, Denmark, and Norway. In Australasia, the song reached number five in both Australia and New Zealand. It stayed on the latter country's chart longer, remaining on the RIANZ chart for 25 weeks compared to 17 weeks on the ARIA Singles Chart. Despite this, the song was overall more popular in Australia, finishing 2005 as the 31st best-selling single and earning a Platinum certification from the ARIA for sales exceeding 70,000 copies.[ citation needed ]
In response to Hurricane Katrina and the popularity of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", Green Day donated all of the iTunes proceeds from this song for the year to the American Red Cross for Katrina aid efforts.[ citation needed ]
The award-winning music video for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" was directed by Samuel Bayer. The music videos for "Holiday" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" were filmed with a single, continuous storyline—the video for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" picks up where "Holiday" has left off, with the last few seconds of "Holiday" audible at the start of the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" video. Both videos were also shot back-to-back. The video depicts the band members after their car has stalled in the desert, and they begin a melancholy walk down a dusty road. Scenes are interspersed with film footage, taken from around Los Angeles, of homeless people and other miserable sights. The video also features performance footage of the band playing the song in an abandoned warehouse.
The video features a 1968 green Mercury Monterey convertible that was modified for filming in the "Holiday" and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" videos. The car features a hood ornament in the shape of the hand and heart grenade image from the American Idiot album cover, which was also used in the video for "Holiday". The "iron fist" was actually used in the video for "Walking Contradiction", when the band members meet at a car towards the end of the video. The band's name is also on the front of the hood in silver letters. The band rode this car to the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards ceremony. As shown in an MTV Making the Video special, Bayer used unorthodox techniques to achieve the aged film look of the "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" video, including using rear projection (as opposed to green screen) and physically damaging the negative: scratching the film with razor blades, pouring coffee on it, and smudging cigarettes on it.
The video won six awards at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2005, most notably for Video of the Year. It also won Best Group Video, Best Rock Video, Best Direction, Best Editing, and Best Cinematography.
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" | |
2. | "Letterbomb" (live) |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" | |
2. | "American Idiot" (live) | |
3. | "She's a Rebel" (live) |
UK limited-edition 7-inch picture disc [30]
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" |
No. | Title | Length |
---|---|---|
1. | "Letterbomb" (live) |
Note
Personnel are adapted from the UK CD1 liner notes. [27]
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
|
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
Australia (ARIA) [83] | Platinum | 70,000^ |
Canada (Music Canada) [84] | 6× Platinum | 480,000‡ |
Denmark (IFPI Danmark) [85] | Platinum | 90,000‡ |
Germany (BVMI) [86] | Gold | 150,000^ |
Italy (FIMI) [87] | Platinum | 50,000‡ |
Spain (PROMUSICAE) [88] | Platinum | 60,000‡ |
United Kingdom (BPI) [89] | Platinum | 600,000‡ |
United Kingdom (BPI) [90] "Holiday" / "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" | Gold | 400,000‡ |
United States (RIAA) [91] Digital | Gold | 500,000* |
United States (RIAA) [92] Mastertone | Gold | 500,000* |
* Sales figures based on certification alone. |
Region | Date | Format(s) | Label(s) | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
United States | November 29, 2004 | Contemporary hit radio | Reprise | [93] |
United Kingdom | CD | [94] | ||
Australia | December 13, 2004 | [95] |
Green Day is an American rock band formed in Rodeo, California, in 1987 by lead vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong and bassist and backing vocalist Mike Dirnt, with drummer Tré Cool joining in 1990. In 1994, their major-label debut Dookie, released through Reprise Records, became a breakout success and eventually shipped over 20 million copies in the U.S. Alongside fellow California punk bands Bad Religion, the Offspring, Rancid, NOFX, Pennywise and Social Distortion, Green Day is credited with popularizing mainstream interest in punk rock in the U.S.
American Idiot is the seventh studio album by the American rock band Green Day, released on September 21, 2004, by Reprise Records. As with their previous four albums, it was produced by Rob Cavallo in collaboration with the group. Recording sessions for American Idiot took place at Studio 880 in Oakland and Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, both in California, between 2003 and 2004. A concept album, dubbed a "punk rock opera" by the band members, American Idiot follows the story of Jesus of Suburbia, a lower-middle-class American adolescent anti-hero. The album expresses the disillusionment and dissent of a generation that came of age in a period shaped by tumultuous events such as 9/11 and the Iraq War. In order to accomplish this, the band used unconventional techniques for themselves, including transitions between connected songs and some long, chaptered, creative compositions presenting the album themes.
"American Idiot" is a protest song by the American rock band Green Day. The first single released from the album American Idiot, the song received positive reviews by critics and was nominated for four 2005 Grammy Awards: Record of the Year, Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Best Rock Song, and Best Music Video.
"Boulevard of Broken Songs" is a popular mash-up mixed by American DJ and producer Party Ben in late 2004. The mix consists of elements from American rock band Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", English rock band Oasis's "Wonderwall", Scottish soft rock band Travis's "Writing to Reach You", and American rapper Eminem's "Sing for the Moment", which itself samples American hard rock band Aerosmith's "Dream On". "Sing for the Moment" was used solely because Party Ben did not have "Dream On" on hand and was on deadline for his Sixx Mixx radio show. Later versions used Aerosmith's original.
"Brain Stew" and "Jaded" are two songs released as a joint single by American rock band Green Day. They appear as the tenth and eleventh tracks and third and final single from the group's fourth studio album, Insomniac. The song was also included on Godzilla: The Album. The two songs were released as one single, as the songs are transitional – "Brain Stew" segues directly into "Jaded". After 9/11, "Brain Stew" was placed on Clear Channel's list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles. The song "Brain Stew" is about vocalist/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong dealing with insomnia. According to Armstrong himself, "Brain Stew" was originally called "Insomniac" on demo, and "Brain Stew" is a reference to Armstrong's long-time friend, James Washburn, who is nicknamed Brain Stew.
"Wake Me Up When September Ends" is a song by the American rock band Green Day and the fourth single from their seventh studio album, American Idiot (2004). Written by the band's front man Billie Joe Armstrong, the song is about the death of Armstrong's father in September 1982 and his life since. The song's lyrics have also been interpreted in other ways, including as a song about the victims and survivors of the September 11 attacks. The song is a rock ballad, starting with an acoustic guitar and later introducing an electric guitar and bells. It was recorded at Ocean Way Recording.
"Holiday" is an anti-war protest song by American rock band Green Day. It was released as the third single from the group's seventh studio album American Idiot, and is also the third track. The song is in the key of F minor. Though the song is a prelude to "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", "Holiday" was released as a single later on, on March 14, 2005.
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"Jesus of Suburbia" is a song by the American rock band Green Day. It was released as the fifth and final single from the group's seventh studio album, American Idiot, and the second song on the album. With the song running for 9 minutes and 8 seconds, it is Green Day's second longest song and the group's longest song to be released as a single. The studio version of the song was considered unfriendly for radio, so it was cut down to 6½ minutes for the radio edit. The single has sold 205,000 copies as of July 2010. Despite its commercial success, the song is the only hit single from the American Idiot album not to be included on the band's greatest hits album, God's Favorite Band.
Bullet in a Bible is a live album by American rock band Green Day, released on November 15, 2005, by Reprise Records. Recorded during their American Idiot World Tour, it was directed by Samuel Bayer, who was the director of all the videos from American Idiot.
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...the musical and the cast recording include every song from "American Idiot"...
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