梦碎大道 (2004)

"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is a song by American rock band Green Day. The power ballad is the fourth track from their seventh studio album, American Idiot (2004). Reprise Records released "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as the second single from American Idiot on November 29, 2004. The song's lyrics were written by lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong, and the music was composed by the band. Production was handled by Rob Cavallo and Green Day.

The song speaks from the point of view of American Idiot's main character, "Jesus of Suburbia", and is a moderate midtempo song characterized by somber and bleak lyrics. This is in contrast to the previous track on the album, "Holiday", which illustrates Jesus of Suburbia's high of being in The City. MTV's Green Day Makes a Video described "Holiday" as a party, and "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" as the subsequent hangover.

The song was ranked number one on Rolling Stone's "Reader's Choice: Singles of the Decade" list in 2009 and number 65 on the "100 Best Songs of the Decade" list in the same year. It has sold over 2 million copies in the United States as of 2010. The single peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, making it Green Day's most successful song in the United States. The song was the ninth-highest-selling single of the 2000s decade with worldwide sales exceeding 5 million copies. As of 2026, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is the only song to win both the Grammy Award for Record of the Year and MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year. It remains one of Green Day's signature songs.

Background and production

In 2004, Green Day released their seventh studio album, American Idiot. A punk rock concept album, American Idiot's narrative is focused on the story of a teenager (who refers to himself as the "Jesus of Suburbia") growing up in the United States under the presidency of George W. Bush during the Iraq War, criticizing both.

Some of the album's songs were written when the band's frontman Billie Joe Armstrong lived alone in New York City for a few weeks in 2003, renting a small loft in the East Village of Manhattan with the goal of coming up with new song ideas. During his time in the city, Armstrong wrote "Boulevard of Broken Dreams". He wrote the song as one about "feeling alone" while living in the city, and trying to take power from that. Armstrong later showcased an almost completed demo to their producer, Rob Cavallo. After hearing the song, Cavallo felt that the song was unlike anything that the band had created previously, and believed that it was going to be successful. The final song was recorded at Ocean Way Recording. The song is named after Boulevard of Broken Dreams, a painting by Gottfried Helnwein that depicts James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and Elvis Presley together in a downtown diner, with the title reflecting their deaths.