“21 Guns” by Green Day

"21 Guns" arrived in 2009 as the second single from 21st Century Breakdown, Green Day's eighth album, and it's the record's big, arm-waving ballad. Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the words, the band shares the music, and Butch Vig produced it for Reprise, giving it the widescreen polish of a band that had long since outgrown the garage.

It builds from a hushed, brooding verse into a chorus that swells like a stadium singalong. It climbed to number 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, their best showing since "Wake Me Up When September Ends" in 2005 and, so far, their last US top-40 hit, rolled over the end credits of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and picked up Grammy nominations for Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.