Green Day says Saviors could join Dookie and American Idiot as one of their career-defining albums

Q29:03Green Day: Dookie, American Idiot, and why their new album Saviors is the best they’ve ever recorded

In 1994, a little-known rock band from California called Green Day broke onto the scene with the release of their major label debut, Dookie. That album, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, propelled them to worldwide superstardom.

Then, just 10 years later, in 2004, Green Day struck gold again with another career-defining album, American Idiot, which made them even bigger, if that's possible.

At that point, many successful bands would simply rest on their laurels — but not Green Day. Today, the band has released what they believe is their next massive career-defining album, Saviors.

In a conversation with all three members of Green Day — frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool — Q's Tom Power got the chance to ask them about their latest record, starting with what they were trying to achieve.

"We were definitely trying to write one of the best records of our career," says Dirnt. "That's for sure … We even held off on a lot of touring this year and said, 'Look, let's just really focus on giving these songs time to evolve.'"

Armstrong agrees. He says his approach to writing the album was to pen smart and thoughtful political lyrics that came "from the heart, just as much as a love song." But it wasn't until the band started recording together at London's famous RAK Studios that Saviors really started to feel like a cohesive project.

"All of a sudden, we were like, 'Oh my God, we're making one of the best records we've ever made,'" he says.

WATCH | Green Day's interview with Tom Power:

'Saviors could be that next era of Green Day'

Sonically, Armstrong says he was "coming from just all different angles" while writing Saviors. Look Ma, No Brains! is a straight-up punk rock song, while Goodnight Adeline, Fancy Sauce and the title track have more of a Britpop sound.

Lyrically, many of the songs on Saviors feel like they draw from the spirit of American Idiot, which deals with themes of fear, confusion and anger. American Idiot was written under the presidency of George W. Bush as he led the U.S. into the Iraq War following the Sept. 11 attacks. It found massive popularity with a younger generation who felt lost in a broken system.

For Saviors, Armstrong was thinking about far-right conspiracy theories like QAnon, and the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

On the song Strange Days Are Here to Stay, he sings, "Strange days are here to stay/ Ever since Bowie died/ It hasn't been the same" (David Bowie died in 2016, which was the same year former U.S. president Donald Trump was elected). The next track, Living in the '20s, follows with similar dystopian themes, referencing mass shootings and sex with robots, while the album's first single, The American Dream Is Killing Me, is emblematic of Green Day's cynicism toward the American way of life.

"I think there's no such thing as what I would consider the American dream anymore, because it's been broken down and means so many different things to different people," Armstrong tells Power. "I mean, ask Native American people what the American dream means to them … My parents, who come from very humble working-class backgrounds — my father was a truck driver and a teamster, and my mother was a waitress — but they were able to afford a home for their kids. That was in the '70s. Can't do that anymore."

WATCH | Official video for The American Dream Is Killing Me:

Now that the Green Day frontman is in his 50s, he says his perspective has changed a lot from the time he wrote American Idiot.

"It's easy to sing a song when you're young and saying, 'Smash the state!'" Armstrong tells Power. "It's like, yeah, I believe that kid. Do I believe the 50-year-old man that's going to say 'Smash the state'? I think when you get older, the world gets a lot more complex and nuanced in what's going on. And I think as time goes on, your views change."

You lose your naiveté, he says, because you get the life experience. "And then you understand and you also have some empathy for some of the people that you love in your family that are [on] completely opposite ends of the political spectrum."

But Armstrong can still relate to his younger self and the feelings he had 20 or 30 years ago when he wrote American Idiot or Dookie.

"I think a song like Basket Case was about having a lot of anxiety and panic attacks and sort of feeling like you're losing your mind," he says. "And, I mean, that sounds like the Disney ride from hell that it's an all-ages thing."

We still care about the kinds of songs that we write and how much effort that we put into it.- Billie Joe Armstrong

Dirnt says the band didn't completely grasp the impact of their early records. Like American Idiot and Dookie, he believes Saviors could be the album that introduces Green Day to a new generation.

"[We] really didn't understand how much [Dookie] meant to people, because we didn't really look back for a long time," says the bassist. "Fast-forward 10 years later, we do American Idiot, and then we realize this is a whole different generation of people … I think Saviors could be that next era of Green Day, I really do."

"We still care about the kinds of songs that we write and how much effort that we put into it," says Armstrong. "I think you can get old, just don't stop caring. That's where I come from when it comes to making music … For us, that's kind of what Green Day's about."

The full interview with Green Day is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Armstrong, Dirnt and Cool talk more about the 30th anniversary of Dookie and the 20th anniversary of American Idiot, plus Woodstock '94 and the band's upcoming North American tour. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Green Day produced by Mitch Pollock.