The creation of American Idiot (what really led to its creation ?)

Cigarettes and Valentines was an unreleased studio album from punk rock band Green Day that would have been the proper follow-up to 2000's Warning.In the summer of 2003, the album was nearly finished when the master recordings of 20 tracks were stolen from the studio. Instead of re-recording the album, the band decided to start from scratch, leading to the creation of American Idiot.

Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong said the album's material was "good stuff." Musically, the material on Cigarettes and Valentines was hard, "quick-tempoed punk" songs in the vein of Green Day's Kerplunk and Insomniac. This sound would have contrasted the group's previous two studio albums,Nimrod and Warning, which displayed more rock/ska and folk punk genres respectively. Bassist Mike Dirnt described the band's decision of returning to the sound found on their older albums, stating, "We've had a nice break from making hard and fast music and it's made us want to do it again." However, Green Day would later call the theft a "blessing in disguise," believing the album wasn't "maximum Green Day". Dirnt admitted that backups of the tapes were made but claims that "it just wasn't the same as the originals." Cigarettes and Valentines was never even roughly mixed, according to various interviews with the band, hence no "legitimate" versions of songs, track lists, artwork, etc. exist.