Understanding Boulevard Of Broken Dreams

I'd love to hear an analysis of "Jesus of Suburbia" and its five movements.

"it just keeps happening" Draws zubat Nice.

"You passed go but there's no $200, just another trip around the board." Oh god. I think my existentialism is flaring up again.

"We have extra chords getting in the way"- this man draws a SNORLAX HAHAHAHAHA

If billie saw this “Did i do that?”

As someone who was twelve when this song came out, I gotta say it's the perfect soundtrack to feelings of adolescent isolation, and now I get why it stuck with me despite my best efforts to avoid anything the people who hated me liked. (Also I had Good Riddance stuck in my head for weeks before high school graduation. Green Day is good at what they do.)

So... This song helped pull me from suicide. The reason was because the song helped me come to terms with being lost in life. The lyrics helped me realise that waiting for someone to rescue me will just leave me walking alone without any resolution. I thought the deep feeling of loneliness would only end with my death, but this song pushed me to reach out for help on my own terms. The next week, I contacted my closest friends, asked them to hang out, and after hours of talking while gathering courage, I told them about my struggles. This was 4 years ago. Green Day, the American Idiot album, and this song have a special place in my tiny black heart because of how it saved this dumbass from death.

Every time you analyze the same song as Rick Beato, I just have to remember that your patrons pick your songs

Maybe if I know nothing about Green Day, I would say "Whoa they are so intense in music theory!" but then, I'm a massive Green Day fan and I watched Heart Like A Heart Grenade (American Idiot behind the scenes) so many times. and they were just like: "Yeah dude this sounds so cool" and they love to goof around in the whole album writing process. I guess, Billie, Mike, and Tré are just natural geniuses

I appreciate you drawing a zubat when you said “it keeps happening”

The tempo of the chords at the end also makes me think he's no longer walking down the road, but now he's running down it. Great video, thank you!

I'm surprised you didn't mention the aggressive echo pedal in the main riff. To me that's just as important as the chords. Not only are they not leading anywhere, but they're also jarring and disorienting, further cementing the sense that the narrator has no idea where he is or where he's going. It's like the internal score of a nervous breakdown.

American Idiot was the very first album I bought with my own pocket money. I remember sticking into my PC and being blown away by the loudness. The bold statement of the title track. It was the first album I imported into my orange iPod Nano. It's cliche but, this album means a lot to me. It reminds me of entering secondary school, my first girlfriend, first battling depression and starting to play the drums. Boulevard of Broken Dreams was the first song I ever confidently said I could play on drums. Thank you 12Tone for another trip down memory lane.

This song's outro is one of my favourite outros. From that sudden unresolved finish, to the weird chords which kind of aggressively deny being in any particular key: F5 (F major or minor); Db5 (okay, that's F minor?); Eb5 (definitely F minor!); D(natural)5 (fooled you, punk!); Ab5 (nah, just kidding it's minor); E5 (OR IS IT?!?!?!). That said, I - unlike 12tone - definitely found F felt like home all the way through, but the chords felt - to me - like the narrator was blundering around aimlessly, unsure of where to go, picking a direction and just hoping it feels right when they get there - the weird Db-Eb-D feeling kind of like someone someone trying to pick the right direction to go, but finding one road feels too low, one road feels too low, and the last feels like the wrong direction altogether - D not being a part of F minor. With F definitely feeling like home (or at least - like the starting point - there's never a sense of resolution strong enough to make F feel like home - just somewhere eerily familiar) the three-bar loop had a very different affect on me. It felt like it was getting back to where it started too early. A more naive writer might have tried to force four-bar feel by adding two more chords: F5 Db5 / Eb5 D(nat)5 / Ab5 E5 / **C5 Bb5** (etc...for example, keeping the theme of resolving from the 4th). But instead it hits the familiar F5 way earlier than expected. It has the feeling that you sometimes get when you're lost, and realise you're going around in circles. You're somewhere familiar, but it's not where you wanted to be, and you realise that not only are you even more lost than you thought, you don't even have the means to navigate out. I'm nowhere near as qualified in this sort of thing as 12tone, but if his explanation of the outro didn't land right with you I'd be really curious if this one lands better. (Also, did anyone else notice the parallel between this song never really resolves and the way Sweet Child Of Mine hunts for resolution?)

I love how at 3:13 he deliberately avoids saying "for lack of a better word and that's my best excuse"

“It keeps happening” draws a zubat

5:29 "It just keeps happening" A wild Zubat appears I love it!

I have always loved that outro section, it feels like an evergrowing stairway that keeps moving its center of gravity but balances on itself

If you’re still riding that nostalgiacoaster, take a closer look at “Face Down” by RJA

I lack the music theory background, but the outro chord progressions always seemed to me like a guitar-y kind of move. Whole song could be played with a capo on the first fret (and the acoustic guitar actually is playing with a capo, at least live). This sets up F as a “floor”: we can’t go any lower, tonally and metaphorically. It may be just because we never do go below F, or may be playing F with open strings subtly influences the sound and the listener, idk. The unexpected third bar and the angry and raw low E always make me feel like I fell through that floor.