Each day in December, I’ll be reflecting back on a song from the 2000’s. The decade saw the return of post-punk and the popularization of folk music, all while some of music’s biggest acts gained their indie footing. Thankfully, it’s a period that I can look back at fondly without cringing. #31DaysOf2000sSongs
Before American Idiot, I had nearly written off Green Day. They had some solid songs over the years, but they all felt like these one-off expressions that were great for just a moment in time. American Idiot changed all that. It was the antithesis of everything that turned me away from the band. As a concept album, American Idiot presented the narrative of a disillusioned teenager following 9/11 and the Iraq War. These weren’t two-minute punk rock songs. It was a story. And the songs were often combined into longer pieces, taking on the form of an opera, not a traditional rock album, which closed with the oft-overlooked “Whatsername”.
American Idiot is full of great moments, like “Holiday”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and the title track. But “Whatsername” had this wit and charm to it that the other tracks didn’t. It’s a reminder that the simplest of chord progressions can still do powerful things in music when other dynamics within a song are shifting. It had this quiet-loud dynamic thing happening that launched the song out of its romantic daze into the bridge, almost out of nowhere. “Whatsername” is a modern-day punk rock song because it captured all these complicated states: anger, despondence, regret.
“The regrets are useless in my mind.”