The title track of Green Day’s second rock opera, it presents the main theme of the album, namely how there’s been a “breakdown” in the first decade of the century. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told Q magazine May 2009:

That goes from a song about where I come from to what it’s like to be in this era, financially. It represents an underdog spirit.

Armstrong speaking about it again in The Sun:

It’s about the collateral damage with it but also the hope and optimism a lot of Americans have. It’s a really strange time. Exciting, because there’s the first African-American president, a smart man who wants to do a good job. A man who’s inheriting the biggest pile of s–t this country has ever seen since the Depression. People are losing their jobs yet have a smile on their face, so this record is about that and the start of another era.