Green Day: Wake me Up When September Ends Meaning

Song Released: 2005

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Wake me Up When September Ends Lyrics

Summer has come and passed
The innocent can never last
wake me up when september ends

Like my fathers come to pass
seven years has gone so fast
wake me up when september ends

Here comes the rain again
falling from the stars
drenched...

1.  

   nibbygrace

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   Feb 4th 2008, 16:49 report

   
   

   This is about the everyone in the army and how they leave the people they love and how stressful and brutal it is being in the army.

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2.  

   anonymous

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   Nov 29th 2007, 17:03 report

   
   

   This song is about going to war, there's no particular line to make me feel this way, but the whole song.
   "Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are" is about the fact that a lot of people who go to war are forever changed, haunted by the horrors of war.

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3.  

   anonymous

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   Nov 7th 2007, 13:11 report

   
   

   It's about a time in life when we realize we are mortal. About how his father grew older and so did he. Before he knew it he was seven, then twenty and he begins to understand that part of life is that it can't last forever. It's about memories of the past and how you never really lose you past. Very pretty song.

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4.  

   anonymous

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   Nov 2nd 2007, 02:44 report

   
   

   I find it interesting how many people are convinced a song and a video have to have the same meaning. Does that mean Weezer's "Buddy Holly" is about Happy Days, and "Keep Fishin'" is about the muppet show?
   
   Some video's (as I suspect is the case with "September" ) just use the song as a background dialogue to an original story separate from the song....sheesh.

   
   
   
   

5.  

   anonymous

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   Nov 1st 2007, 14:50 report

   
   

   Why the fuck do you idiots all keep writing the same thing? Before posting a comment about how it was written about his dad look at the bajillion other comments that already said this, stfu.

   
   
   
   

6.  

   anonymous

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   Jul 31st 2007, 18:31 report

   
   

   Ok some of you people do not understand it is not about war or a couple or anything like that it is about his dad's death in September you see his dad died when Billie was only 10 years old and Billie ran to his room and locked himself in there screaming wake me up when September ends which is how the song came. At least that's what my friend told me. She swore on Billie's face so I'm sure she was not lying, and when you go on you tube and you click on the live one he starts crying yea its really sad so yea.

   
   
   
   

7.  

   anonymous

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   Jul 1st 2007, 15:14 report

   
   

   Okay I don't know if this is right because I agree with the theory of the song is about Billie Joe's father dying. but I heard from my friend it was about a guy who has to leave his family and girlfriend for the war. I'm not sure if this is true, but it explains the music video with the war in it.

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8.  

   blackthorn7861

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   Jun 26th 2007, 21:50 report

   
   

   Billie Joe Armstrong (not Billy or Billy Joel!)did write this song from inspiration of his father passing. Andrew Marciano Armstrong died in september 1982 of cancer. Billie Joe was 10 years old. But the music video portrays how a teenage couple are seperated because the boy has to go to war. It is associated with september 11, and green day is anti-war, how war ties in with september 11, it was the cause of the war. I read the biography book, Nobody Likes You: Mark Spitz. In the book billie joe explains that the video was made that way to get teenagers to talk about the war and their views on it, because teenagers don't really talk about that alot, and other music doesn't focus on it. It has to do with standing up for what you believe in no matter what everyone else thinks, and that you shouldn't follow the crowd to fit in. Be a minority. It's the message green day has always promoted through their music. It's what they believe in. If your beliefs differ, you can always not listen to green day then.

   
   
   
   

9.  

   SquareEagle

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   Jun 19th 2007, 21:38 report

   
   

   I agree with some of the previous posters, in that the song is somewhat open ended. I know Billie Joe's father was the inspiration, but I have a much more personal meaning. For me, this song represents my experiences during Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, stranding my family and I in Texas for the month of September. "Here comes the rain again, falling from the stars" The rain just kept coming and showed no indication of stopping. "Drenched in my pain again, becoming who we are" I could only watch helplessly as my home city was ravaged by the storm, and these experiences helped to shape who I am now. "As my memory rests, but never forgets what I lost" I am now able to keep the memories from causing me grief, but I'll never forget the things I lost because of the storm and my moving away afterward. "Wake me up when September ends" obviously reminds me of how miserable that month was. Spending four weeks in several different hotel rooms and just wanting it all to be over. Now here's where it gets tricky. "20 years has gone so fast" There is a statistic out there that says how often certain level storms will make landfall on the gulf coast near New Orleans. The timeframe for a storm as destructive as Katrina is approximately 20 to 25 years if I remember correctly. And it had been about 25 years since the last major hurricane came that close to the city. As I said before, this is all my personal interpretation of it. I don't claim that it's the RIGHT interpretation, but it's mine.

   
   
   
   

10.  

    Esparanza

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    Jun 19th 2007, 19:22 report

    
    

    This song is about Billie Joe's dad's death when he was ten. "summer has come and passed" means there's a time when he thought he wasn't going to be ok but he is now (also referring to the time in which his father died)."wake me up whemn september ends" means give him until the end of september to be ok. "ring out the bells again like we did when spring began" he's over it and ready to move on. "like my father's come to pass 20 years has gone so fast" means he forgot about it and moved on but he remembers it now and realizes 20 years passed and he hardly ever thought about it, that he really was and is ok now. "here comes the rain again falling from the stars drenched in my pain again becoming who we are" means the rain is his tears coming again falling from probably a memory he thought of that made him cry and he's feeling that pain all over again remebering those same feelings as a kid and still as an adult.

    
    
    
    

11.  

    anonymous

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    Jun 12th 2007, 09:45 report

    
    

    I agree with many of the previous posters. This song is quite open-ended. And while the inspiration was Billie Joe's father, I relate to this song on a personal level because of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005. The residents of New Orleans, myself included, all simply wished for it to be over. "Here comes the rain again" and the subsequent lines only reinforces this for me because New Orleans gets multiple storms almost every year, and every time the citizens must simply keep going. "Like my fathers come to pass, seven years has gone so fast" and "twenty years has gone so fast" shows how many of the residents have lived there their entire lives, and their parents and grandparents before them, all having to deal with these storms. As I said, this song strikes a personal chord with me.

    
    
    
    

12.  

    Music_is_love

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    May 27th 2007, 01:59 report

    
    

    It's clear to see that this song has something to do with war. It's true in fact about Billie's father who died of cancer because of his involvement in the war. Billie's father was exposed to a cancer causing chemical which caused his death when Billie was young. However, he uses the message of the present war in Iraq to show that his father paid the ultimate price of the countries dicision to go to war. So overall, the song is about his fathers death and Billie opposing the war in Iraq.

    
    
    
    

13.  

    anonymous

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    Apr 26th 2007, 12:08 report

    
    

    First of all, this song isn't about 9/11 it's about Billie Joe's dad who died of lung cancer when Billie was 10. This song was wrote as a tribute to his father and expresses feelings of loss and acceptance.

    
    
    
    

14.  

    Anonymous101

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    Mar 29th 2007, 12:06 report

    
    

    This song IS about Billie Joe losing his father to cancer when he was a young boy. The video for this song shows a young couple dealing with the fact that one is going off to war. Green Day thought that the song related to people losing a loved one because of the war that is going on right now, they felt it appropriate to use that as the theme for their video. I saw a special about the making of this video and some of the soldiers in the video are actual men who served in the Iraq war. Essentially the song is about losing a loved one, and in Billie joe's case it was his father, hence the reference to his father!

    
    
    
    

15.  

    anonymous

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    Mar 18th 2007, 16:13 report

    
    

    People arguing about what it means should watch the proformance of it on youtube. He explains that it's about his father dying...he wrote it cause it was therapeutic for him.
    
    It's not about 9/11. But I see how most of you think it is..

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16.  

    anonymous

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    Mar 5th 2007, 19:10 report

    
    

    ONLY THE FILM CLIP IS ABOUT WAR OR LOVE OR WHATEVER
    
    
    The song is actually about his dad dying.
    
    
    geeeeez.

    
    
    
    

17.  

    anonymous

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    Feb 9th 2007, 22:48 report

    
    

    i know one thing
    THIS SONG IS NOT ABOUT 9/11
    just because the song has "september" in it they think it is about 9/11
    just like Lucy in the sky with LSD
    
    ANYWAYS..............................
    
    this song is about the passing of Billie-Joe's father who died of Cancer. The reason why it is called Wake me Up When September ends because he died on a September.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
    
    
    
    

18.  

    Angelmisty

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    Feb 6th 2007, 16:15 report

    
    

    This song is about Billie-Joe's dad who died of cancer when Billie was 10

    
    
    
    

19.  

    anonymous

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    Jan 20th 2007, 23:56 report

    
    

    Good song! Plus, I'm glad it was made after 9/11 or Clear Channel would have banned it from radio stations (After 9/11, Clear Channel found some songs that would be a bad idea to play due to 9/11). I know it's not about 9/11 because Billie is talking about his father's death, not the thousands who died during the terrorist attacks.

    
    
    
    

20.  

    anonymous

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    Jan 11th 2007, 20:40 report

    
    

    In this melancholy ballad, Billie Joe, backed by the support of the other members of Green Day, takes a trip back to his painful childhood and thinks about the day he lost his innocence when his father died. Like many faced with such a traumatic event, Billie Joe never truly recovered, and he can't believe that twenty years have passed since the day. As Armstrong associates pain with the month September, the month his father died, he would rather not deal with anything related to the month prompting him to sing, "As my memory rests, but never forgets what I lost... Wake me up when September ends..."
    
    Billie Joe has been known to cry during live performances of this song, and one such performance can be seen on their 2005 live DVD/album Bullet In A Bible. Although, it should be noted, it is not certain whether he is actually crying or if the lighting is only reflecting off sweat on his face.