Green Day

Green Day transformed punk rock from underground obscurity into mainstream currency, proving that three-chord fury could conquer both college radio and stadium audiences. Emerging from Berkeley's Gilman Street scene in 1987, Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tré Cool refined their melodic hardcore through relentless touring before Dookie (1994) sold ten million copies and made snotty nihilism commercially viable. Their power-pop sensibility, indebted to The Ramones and Buzzcocks, married breakneck tempos with singalong hooks that teenagers could scream back at festivals.

American Idiot (2004) reframed the trio as political commentators, its rock-opera ambitions addressing post-9/11 disillusionment through conceptual storytelling. The album moved seven million units and spawned a Broadway adaptation, cementing their cultural reach beyond music venues. Five Grammy Awards and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction (2015) validate their influence on both pop-punk's commercial explosion and punk's ongoing relevance. They remain architects of accessible rebellion, distilling adolescent fury into three-minute anthems that refuse to apologise for their mass appeal.