6. Wake Me Up When September Ends – Green Day
This is obviously a depressed song about some kind of loss. But depending on the year it was published, everyone assumed it was about the war in Iraq or more especially, 9/11. Green Day has never shied away from political comments or anti-war views, but for lead vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong, this particular song bears a far more personal and traumatic history. He penned the song on his father, who passed away in September 1982 from oesophageal cancer while Armstrong was just ten years old. This childhood experience showed itself as a great emotive track where the apparently simple words bear the weight of decades of loss and pain.
Though reasonable considering its release period, the song’s misreading as a political statement about modern events slightly lessens its very personal character. The song’s transformation into something of an online meme—with fans yearly reaching out to “wake up” Billie Joe when October arrives—adds to this intricacy. Armstrong has shown amazing grace in managing this turning of his personal tragedy into a social media joke, even humorously implying he might write a song called Shut the F*ck Up When October Begins shows how readily major artistic expressions can be recontextualized and sometimes trivialised by popular culture. The song is nonetheless a potent monument to the long-lasting effects of loss in infancy and the ways in which grief could reverberate over decades.
zi ang