Monday Melody: Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day)

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I’m posting this on a Sunday because I feel like it and it’s close enough to Monday anyway.

“Boulevard of Broken Dreams” was a huge 2005 comeback hit by the alternative/pop-punk band Green Day after several years of being out of the public eye. It’s one of the last great rock & roll songs in the wilderness of dreary post-grunge and r&b/hip hop that dominated the airwaves prior to the changeover to EDM and pop around 2009. “Boulevard” has special meaning for me because of the connection it has with Borderline Personality Disorder. I think it captures the horror and emptiness of what it feels like to have BPD, especially these lines:

I’m walking down the line that divides me somewhere in my mind
One the borderline of the edge and where I walk alone
Read between the lines what’s fucked up and everything’s alright
Check my vital signs to know that I’m still alive and I walk alone
I walk alone
I walk alone
My shadow’s the only one that walks beside me
My shallow heart’s the only thing that’s beating
Sometimes I wish someone out there would find me
Til then I walk alone

25 thoughts on “Monday Melody: Boulevard of Broken Dreams (Green Day)”

  1. LuckyOtter, my Dear Friend who always seems to be there just at the right time.
    This is, and has been part of our theme music as we go through day-to-day life, although this is mainly reserved for dark overcast skys which accompany sunrises that should come with a warning label “WARNING – CONTAINS DEPRESSION!!!! Avoid exposure within audible limits.”
    If you wouldn’t mind my input on the subject:
    You, all others like you, and I, are not what is so wrong with this world. A world where Bullying and tearing a person apart, then stomping on the pieces of their broken heart is and always has been the status quo.
    A world where all the Lemmings don’t have to jump on the bandwagon of “The Crying Fiddler”, they just continually follow blindly along, taking cues from the idiot as this world burns….
    RACISM, oh yes, my race matters and no one elses does.
    CLIMATE CHANGE, oh yes, hare krishna, dump fossil fuel and coal, but let’s keep dumping enriched, bomb-grade plutonium nuclear waste on the ocean floor.
    HIROSHIMA, let him cry while playing his violin, as he apologizes for having to pay the warmongers back for all the lives lost at Pear Harbor on December 7, 1941.
    ABUSE IN ANY FORM, sorry My Dear Otter, the numbers aren’t suddenly rising, it’s been status quo to pick apart the good, caring human beings with hearts the size of Texas, just to cover their wrong doings and black, cancerous, microscopic-sized hearts.
    I, I, I, ME, ME, ME, has ruled the day since the 1950’s at the very least.
    This world of today is not the product of pornography, drugs, the white album, the Beatles, or even long hair.
    The world in which We Walk Alone On Our Boulevard Of Broken Dreams, is a world created over 7,000 years, give or take a bit, is inhabited by the Heartless Lemmings and The Collateral Damage left-overs from all the Abuse inflicted on the only good humans this world ever knew.
    I hope you know how much I enjoyed our meeting as we walked alone.
    But wait, that means we weren’t really ever alone….
    Robert

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  3. Pingback: Boulevard of Broken Dreams (cover) | Artist- Ted Giffin - Musician

    • I just checked your link out–wow! 😮
      I like this arrangement-the melody sounds slightly “off” but in a way I think you intended. It does seem as if there is more than one voice all kind of at war with each other, and there seems to be a scattered kind of feeling and some kind of extraneous “noise” like the noise that goes on in the head of a triggered Borderline (or person with CPTSD/PTSD). I think this is what you intended…anyway, I think this is a really interesting version and the vocals are good. I’m happy to have you share my link, and have it here on my blog. Thanks!

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  4. Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I did a cover version of this Green Day song, and tagged back to this post here, because it inspired me to do a take on the song in a new light, from the vantage point of the internal struggles of someone who has the disorder. If you do not want the extra traffic or attention. Lemme know, I can take out the link to your site. I am going to leave you the link right here. https://tedgiffin.com/2016/06/05/boulevard-of-broken-dreams-cover/

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I felt that the song spoke level of depths to me. It is such a metaphor of being in pain and suffering. The loneliness that I felt throughout my life as I listened to this song is such a poetry.

    Liked by 1 person

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