Which Green Day song was written about the death of Billie Joe Armstrong's father?

The Green Day song written about the death of Billie Joe Armstrong’s father is “Wake Me Up When September Ends.” Armstrong’s father died in September 1982, when Armstrong was ten years old, and the song grew from grief he had carried since childhood.

Armstrong wrote the song for Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, but it was not central to the album’s fictional rock-opera storyline. He initially avoided writing directly about his father because the subject was too painful. According to the story associated with the song, Armstrong ran home from his father’s funeral and told his mother to wake him when September ended, a phrase he remembered for years.

The song is sometimes interpreted more broadly because its lyrics evoke recurring grief and the passage of time. Its music video also uses a separate wartime storyline, which has led some listeners to connect it with the Iraq War or September 11. Those interpretations add context, but the song’s original personal inspiration was Armstrong’s father’s death. It was released as the fourth single from American Idiot in 2005.