Warning

This song is about how rules are made to be broken and warnings can be ignored. You live your own life, you make your own choices. Says bass player Mike Dirnt: "You gotta make your own decisions and choices. It's not so much about what to think, it's just to think. Question everything."

"Warning" is the title track to Green Day's sixth album. By this time they were mellowing out a bit, with lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong playing more acoustic guitar. This was a product both of the band getting older and the pop-punk sound they ushered in falling out of fashion. The album sold poorly, but the band was well established by this point and wasn't watching the charts. The normal trajectory would have Green Day's next albums show further declines, but that didn't happen. They didn't release another album until 2004, and it was huge: American Idiot. Like Warning, it's more refined than their earlier work and by this time that more emotive sound was all the rage.

The music video, directed by Francis Lawrence, shows the band performing the song in a San Francisco apartment. Unlike in many of their videos, they don't destroy anything.