Songfacts®:

• Billie Joe Armstrong was raised in a working class environment in which his father worked as a truck driver for Safeway to support his family. This personal song finds the Green Day frontman recalling his upbringing. He told Rolling Stone:
  
  "It's about growing up totally working class and not knowing what the future was going to be, and being sort of a dope-smoking kid. And then it's also a reference to my father, who was in the teamsters and watching him go out to work in the picket line. I remember my father being on strike a lot. The song is kind of like feeling like, "Is anything really changing?"
• The song finds Armstrong reflecting on his high school days: "It's looking at your past, and how you grew up as a kid, earning a couple of bucks to mow somebody's lawn, then smoking dope with your friends," he explained to Q magazine.
• The song's animated lyric video is filled with storybook-style drawings. It was created by illustrator Joseba Elorza, also known as MiraRuido.