"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 Idiots 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 Stones 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 2000–2009 decade with worldwide sales exceeding 5 million copies. As of 2021, "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 "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" was written during a respite from pre-production on what would eventually become the band's seventh album, American Idiot. Hoping to clear his head and develop new ideas for songs, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong traveled to New York City alone for a few weeks, renting a small loft in the East Village of Manhattan. He spent much of this time taking long walks and participating in jam sessions in the basement of Hi-Fi, a bar in Alphabet City. He began socializing with songwriters Ryan Adams and Jesse Malin. Armstrong wrote the song about his time in New York City, about "feeling alone" and trying to take power from that fact. Armstrong felt the song fit nicely with the album's storyline, which is