By Uptin Saiidi
In the words of Green Day, “summer has come and past,” and tonight as midnight strikes we’ll be humming the melody of the band’s second highest U.S. selling single, “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” On the surface, we completely understand the mellow-sounding track; it’s that awkward month between summer break and apple picking when the weather is totally bipolar.
But like me, you might have mistaken its meaning. Because of the song’s release date, it’s most commonly thought to be about the events of 9/11, but band member Billie Joe Armstrong clarified the song was actually written as a memorial to his father, who died of cancer in September 1982.
Later, the song was dedicated to the deceased guitarist Johnny Ramone of the Ramones, who died in September 2004.
The song eventually because a tribute to victims of Hurricane Katrina and was performed live with U2 at the first game played after the hurricane in the Superdome in New Orleans.
In honor of today’s timely meaning of the song, we made a list of ten fun ways to commemorate: Read More...
By Melanie Wolfson
Last night, I sacrificed a night of sleep in the name of Green Day. And with only a few hours to go before I get my chance to meet them, I am shaking in my seat and trying to think of what I will possibly say to them in the event that I don’t pass out. 
SAN FRANCISCO — "I'm going to Hollywood, wooooooooooooahhh!" Green Day's Tre Cool exclaimed, breaking out of a suite at a hotel where the band has been doing interviews, just a few miles from their East Bay home base. The hallway had been quiet for hours until this point, and there was no apparent reason for Cool's exclamation, but that's probably why he did it in the first place.
So, early this morning, after completing my daily coffee-and-Croissan'Wich regiment, I opened my MTV inbox and discovered — lo and behold! — that the good folks at Warner/Reprise had sent me a pair of brand new Green Day publicity photos, for their upcoming 21st Century Breakdown album.
Usually, when I'm invited to go listen to an album, it's a bit of a drag: Walk over to major label offices, make small talk with wary publicist ("You can't write about this until next month, OK? OK?"), sit in conference room by myself, drink bottle of water provided by intern, scribble down notes about "chugging guitar," repeat one week later, only at a different office for a different album and with a different publicist.