Twenty years ago, the Grammy Award winning pop-punk trio Green Day released American Idiot — their ambitious rock opera, a treatise on a world power in decline written by a band with cultural clout and consequently, political power. (It was angry and smart, and most importantly, hook-heavy — the catchiness no doubt a driving factor in its Broadway adaptation.)
American Idiot ushered in a new generation of loyal listeners — in some situations, the children of the initial fans who account for one of the over 10 million sales of their 1994 album Dookie — offering a familiar language of dissidence for a generation just old enough to remember 9/11.