When September comes around, he’s ready to hibernate until the end of the month, to avoid feeling this way. Wake me up when September ends Chorus to “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day.īillie Joe may grow and change, but the lyrics here show that he will never forget the pain he felt when he lost his father. This is what he sings about in the chorus: This is when Billie Joe Armstrong met Green Day’s bassist Mike Dirnt and together they formed the band Sweet Children, who would later change their name to Green Day.Īs Armstrong told Howard Stern, he is reminded of his father every day, but the downpour of emotions is strongest during the month of September, when it happened. Then, Billie Joe references his father’s passing, followed by the first stop in the autobiographical timeline, which is seven years later. Like everything else that’s good in life, it can never last forever, and the fading of summer is used as a metaphor for loss here. Wake me up when September ends First verse to “Wake Me Up When September Ends” by Green Day.Īrmstrong’s lyrics start by placing us in space-time, right at the end of summer, just as the title suggests. With all of this in mind, let’s take a deeper look at the lyrics, starting with the first verse: The lyrics were penned from a genuine place, mourning the loss of something that did not deserve to be taken, and the turmoil that follows in the aftermath. Knowing the depth of emotion that fueled the songwriting process, it’s easy to see why this song has had such a powerful impact on so many people. Billie Joe Armstrong on the meaning of “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. It wasn’t like a negative emotion so much, but it was just kind of like honoring him. I kinda avoided writing about him for many years, and then finally having a breakthrough like that felt good. I think it’s something that just stayed with me the month of September being that anniversary that always is just, I don’t know, kind of a bummer. I think about him every day, really. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” was a chart-topping success in the rock world, and even peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100, making it their second top ten hit after “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” from the same album hit number two earlier that year.ĭuring a 2019 interview on the Howard Stern Show, Billie recounts the story behind “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, including how he remembered the song’s title so many years after the passing of his father: Released in 2005 as a single from Green Day’s seventh album, American Idiot, the song was dedicated to the Hurricane Katrina victims that August (with a live version released as a benefit on September 3rd), and is also seen as a dedication to the victims of the September 11th attacks. When his mother finally came to knock on the door, he said “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. The story goes that Billie Joe first came up with the title for this song in the immediate aftermath of his father’s death, as he locked himself in his room for hours upon returning home from the funeral. Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is a moody, heartfelt song that Billie Joe Armstrong wrote about his late father, who died of esophageal cancer when the singer/guitarist was just ten years old, on September 10th, 1982.
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