Boulevard of Broken Dreams
by Green Day
- 82
- BPM
- F minor
- Key
- 4A
- Camelot
- 29
- Danceability
- 1
- Acousticness
Billie Joe Armstrong wrote "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" in New York in 2003, when he spent a few weeks alone in a small loft in the East Village looking for song ideas. He wanted to write about feeling alone in the city and taking power from that. He played an almost finished demo for producer Rob Cavallo, who told him it was unlike anything the band had done and would be a success. Green Day then recorded the final version at Ocean Way Recording. The title comes from a Gottfried Helnwein painting that puts James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley in a downtown diner.
The song speaks as the American Idiot character Jesus of Suburbia. It follows "Holiday", which MTV called a party, as the hangover. Noel Gallagher criticized Green Day over a chord progression that matches "Wonderwall".
Reprise released it as the second single in late November 2004. It reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, the highest position for a Green Day song, and it was the first song to top the Mainstream Rock, Modern Rock, Adult Top 40 and Mainstream Top 40 charts. It won Record of the Year at the 2006 Grammy Awards.
Boulevard of Broken Dreams runs at 82 BPM, the tempo of boom-bap hip-hop, reggae and slow R&B. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.93 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 732 ms. It is in F minor, Camelot 4A, which shares its notes with Ab major and mixes cleanly with Bb minor and C minor.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.