In the summer of 2003 Green Day went into a studio to write and record new material for a new album, tentatively titled Cigarettes and Valentines. After completing 20 tracks, the master tapes were stolen from the studio. Green Day chose not to try to re-create the stolen album, but instead started over. By the end of 2003, Green Day collaborated with Iggy Pop on two tracks for his album Skull Ring. On February 1, 2004 a new song, a cover of "I Fought the Law" made its debut on a commercial for iTunes during NFL Super Bowl XXXVIII. The band underwent serious "band therapy," engaging in several long talks to work out the members' differences after accusations from Dirnt and Cool that Armstrong was "the band's Nazi" and a show-off bent on taking the limelight from the other band members.
The resulting Green Day 2004 album, American Idiot, debuted at number one on the Billboard charts, the band's first ever album to top the chart, backed by the success of the album's first single, "American Idiot." The album was billed as a "punk rock opera" which follows the journey of the fictitious "Jesus of Suburbia". American Idiot won the 2005 Grammy for "Best Rock Album" and Green Day swept the 2005 MTV music awards, winning a total of seven of the eight awards they were nominated for, including the coveted Viewer's Choice Award.
Through 2005, Green Day toured in support of the album with about 150 dates — the longest tour in its career — visiting Japan, Australia, South America and the United Kingdom, where Green Day drew a crowd of 130,000 people over a span of two days. While touring for American Idiot, Green Day filmed and recorded the two concerts at the Milton Keynes National Bowl in England, which was voted 'The Best Show On Earth' in a Kerrang! Magazine Poll.
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