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All Songs Considered: Why we still love Green Day

Green Day's latest album, Saviors, arrived as the group is celebrating the 20th anniversary of American Idiot and 30th anniversary of Dookie.
Alice Baxley
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Apple Music/Courtesy of the artist
Green Day's latest album, Saviors, arrived as the group is celebrating the 20th anniversary of American Idiot and 30th anniversary of Dookie.

Green Day is back — or maybe they never left. But with the band's stellar new album, Saviors, the trio of Billy Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool is clearly energized, inspired and firing on all cylinders. The album, which dropped Jan. 19, comes just as the group is celebrating both the 20th anniversary of its landmark rock opera, American Idiot, and the 30th anniversary of its breakout release, Dookie.

So, on this week's All Songs Considered, we go deep on what makes Green Day so special, the secret of the band's staying power and why we still love these guys, nearly 40 years after they first formed in California's East Bay.

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
Robin Hilton is a producer and co-host of the popular NPR Music show All Songs Considered.