15 years ago, Green Day tried to balance social awareness with pop-punk exuberance

By all accounts, Green Day’s sixth studio album, Warning, which was released 15 year ago today, had a tough genesis. Marc Spitz’s Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, And Music Of Green Day describes a band caught up in changing musical trends who was also trying to figure out how to stay relevant to an aging fanbase. “They were definitely at a very big crossroads,” said John Lucasey, who owned the studio where Warning was recorded, in the book. Musically, things weren’t easy either: Initial sessions with producer Scott Litt (R.E.M.) didn’t yield the songs they’d hoped, leading the band members to self-produce the album and bring back long-time collaborator Rob Cavallo as executive producer.

Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong eventually found creative inspiration from Bob Dylan’s 1965 album, Bringing It All Back Home, and wrote a whole batch of socially conscious, politically tinged songs. The results sounded like Gilman Street pop-punk and class of ’77-era punk filtered through the lens of British Invasion rock and earnest ’60s folk—from the Kinks-esque “Deadbeat Holiday” to the harmonica-driven, shambling pick-me-up “Hold On” and the strident jangle-pop of “Church On Sunday.”