Of all of the bands that I've listened to in all of my years of listening to music, I've never found a band whose music resonates with me so deeply. In many cases, the messages that I relate to are not profound, but I believe that's what makes them all the more special and personal. Of the many songs in Green Day's catalog, I've decided to share the five songs that have had the greatest impact on my life, from when I was 13 and got American Idiot in my Easter basket to the present day as I sing these familiar tunes with the same enthusiasm I had when I first learned the lyrics.


Let's travel back in time to 2004. On the first day of Jr. High as I straightened my hair, put on my make-up and tied my brand new sneakers, I heard the song that started it all. To be completely factual, I saw the music video, and it stopped me dead in my tracks. I'd never heard of Green Day, but they certainly made one of the coolest videos I'd ever seen. Without this, the opening song of one of the most epic albums of our generation, I would conceivably not be writing this today. "American Idiot's" message, its sound and the era of uncertainty and confusion it existed in are all a part of me, and without it that part of me may never have existed. Hearing Billie slam out the chords- whether recorded, live, or on Broadway - is one of the most satisfying musical experiences I've ever known because it brings me back to that first day, as well as to a crucial time in American history, both of which have shaped who I am as a person.


I believe that this epic album-opener truly defines the generation to which I am confined - those members of the "class of '13, born in the era of humility"; I am "the desperate in the decline," working toward a degree that may not lead to a job as kids I grew up with go off to a war that has no end in sight to fight for a country that is spiraling downhill due to "the bastards of 1969." If "Jesus of Suburbia" mirrored my 13-year-old self's angst and hatred toward the small town I lived in, than "21st Century Breakdown" mirrors the anxieties that I face as a 19-year-old American. Although it doesn't offer answers, it offers an outlet for our collective frustration, allowing us to "dream, America dream"; to "scream, America, scream"; and to question our belief in the supposed "heroes and cons" that are to determine the fate of our entire generation. Although this is the newest song on my list, I believe that as the years pass, this song will bring me back to how I feel right now. Even if it doesn't hold that power five years from now, it describes to a tee the confusion and frustration I feel over never being able to make it as a "working class hero", and maybe not being able to make it at all.



And now we come to the joys and pains of first love. Around the same time I got into Dookie, I also got into 39/Smooth. I was also falling irrevocably and pathetically in love with one of my best friends. For obvious reasons, this was the song I lamented to when I realized that things would never work between us. I consider it to be in the top five songs that had an impact on my life because first love is serious business, people. To this day I have memories of that time period whenever I listen to this song, and I think that's a really special thing, simple as its significance to me may be.


Welcome to teenage angst at its purist. This song has time and again proven itself to be incredibly meaningful to me, as its layered meanings continue to reveal themselves with the things I've experienced as I've gone through Jr. High and High School and into college and my foray into being an actual adult. At first listen, I related instantly to the Jesus of Suburbia's insatiable thirst for adventure, and ultimate disappointment when none was to be found in his suburban nightmare of a town. I, as I'm sure was common of many kids my age, envisioned myself as "the [daughter] of rage and love, the Jesus of Suburbia", fighting to come into my own in a town that I did not want because I felt that it did not want me. I would scream along to the "I Don't Care" verses, thinking of all the people whom I felt had wronged me in some way. At the end, I vowed with JOS not to "feel any shame, [not to] apologize when there ain't nowhere you can go." I took this as another symbol of the unchangeable circumstances of my sexuality, and "Tales of another Broken Home" gave me the strength (albeit very dramatically) to stand strong as an early adolescent. As I grew older, and especially upon seeing the musical as a freshman in college, the verses about leaving home and striking out on my own became the most pertinent messages the song had to offer. It seems that in many ways, "City of the Damned" mirrored many of the feelings I had that eventually lead up to me breaking down the wall that kept me from chasing after what I really wanted within the last few months. "Jesus of Suburbia" was one of the first Green Day songs I truly felt described me, and in the five years that I have listened to, played, and sung this song, it has followed me and continuously adapted to who I am; I question to this day whether it is a testament to the band that produced the song or this fan who has held it in her heart for so long.


I bought Dookie the summer before I entered eighth grade, which was a crucial time in my life in terms of discovering my sexuality. Everything was starting to come together for me - I began to notice that I had strong feelings for girls and not for boys, and as those feelings developed into my first true crush, I came to the realization that I was an enormous gaywad. Having this record in my life at that time was, I believe, one of the most pertinent reasons that I embraced who I was and came out at such an early age. I understood from the song and from interviews that I found that Billie Joe had questioned his sexuality as a teenager. It seemed to me that if he could be such a successful adult even after exposing "skeletons... in [his] closet" that I could do the same. His story helped me to begin my own story, and without it I don't believe I would be in the same place that I'm in today.