Minority

The Moral Majority was an organization led by the minister Jerry Falwell Sr. to advocate for conservative religious values. They had some sway in the '80s, advocating for school prayer and a ban on abortion, while opposing gay rights. Well, if this was the majority, Green Day was proudly in the minority, as they express in this song. Down with the moral majority 'Cause I want to be the minority

"Minority" was the first Green Day song that found the band dipping their toes into the political waters. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the lyric while the 2000 presidential election was ramping up in the United States between George W. Bush and Al Gore. "I started feeling the political wheels starting to turn toward conservatism a little bit," he told Rolling Stone. "I think that song is sort of about declaring that you're stepping out of the line, you're not part of the sheep, and trying to find your own individualism. It felt like we were diving into something that was more conceptual for sure."

"Minority" was the first single from Green Day's sixth album, Warning. The pop-punk sound the band innovated had fallen out of favor and was just starting to be revived by blink-182, which led the next wave (Simple Plan, Good Charlotte) into the early '00s. The song topped out at #101 in America and the album sold worse than any since Green Day's 1991 independent-label release Kerplunk, but the band wasn't concerned. They took some time off, and when they returned, instead of diving back into pop-punk, they adopted a much more mature sound for their 2004 album American Idiot.