The only politics in the first single from Green Day's imminent three-album blitz are the sexually urgent kind, and the sole whiff of opera comes when Billie Joe Armstrong sings, "Oh love/ Won’t you rain on me tonight?" – a neat allusion to the climax of the Who's Quadrophenia. Otherwise, this song is a tight, addicting bundle of pop-hook class and crunchy-punk fundamentals. The entire first verse is Armstrong singing like the stark solo John Lennon – just a bright, strident vocal and crisply strummed guitar. But when Armstrong’s bandmates fall in around him, Green Day sound the way you originally loved ’em, and refreshed: heavier and hardened from their time in the trenches but back in the garage, ready for rapture.

Listen to "Oh Love":

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“Youth Knows No Pain”

“Like on 'Youth Knows No Pain' — we are the ones that should demonstrate, because we can take it,” Likke Li said. “We can pierce ourselves, take Ecstasy, dance all night and still go to work at our McDonald's jobs.” Despite the hedonistic sentiment in the song, the Swedish singer also admitted in hindsight her youth had repercussions. “I remember when I was 18-19 and feeling that I know it all,” Li said. “I always feel that I know it all. But that song is about realizing you don’t, and reflecting, ‘Boy, if I only knew what would follow.’”