Green Day - Wake Me Up When September Ends - Lyrics Meaning

``Wake Me Up When September Ends'' was the fourth single from Green Day's smash hit album American Idiot. The ballad was released on June 13, 2005 and became the band's second Top 10 single in the US. The song is track 11 on the album and is dated September 10th in the liner notes, leading many to believe that it is a tribute to the horrific events of 9/11. In interviews, however, Billie Joe Armstrong, Green Day's lead singer, has explained that the track is actually about the death of his father, who was a minor league baseball player and a jazz musician. Armstrong was only 10 years old when his father lost his battle against esophageal cancer in September of 1982. In ``Wake Me Up When September Ends,'' the singer revisits painful memories of the event and bemoans the accompanying loss of innocence (``Summer has come and passed / The innocent can never last''). The lyric ``Twenty years has gone so fast'' refers to the tremendous success Armstrong and Green Day achieved after the death of the singer's father. Armstrong mourns the fact that his father will never be able to see the man that his son has become and his many accomplishments.