POP NOTES.(Green Day, Miranda Lambert)

SINGLES GOING STEADY -- The Bay Area punk band Green Day continues to soldier on, with surprising results. Green Day became a favorite with teen-agers in 1994 with "Dookie," an album of tuneful, mildly aggressive commercial punk accompanied by an omnipresent video on MTV of the singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong jumping up and down on a couch. Green Day's star faded slightly, but just as they were becoming a nineties footnote they released their most political record, "American Idiot," in 2004, and found a new generation of teen-agers ready to pump their fists and wear eyeliner. But it's not Armstrong's simple, passionate politics that have converted consumers--it's his simple, oversized melodies. The group's current hit, "Wake Me Up When September Ends," is the kind of thing Oasis made their name with--a scenery-chewing rock ballad, evocative of ten other bands at once and completely impossible to not sing, given some downtime and an idle mind. The sense of regret in the lyrics has something to do with the academic calendar, maybe, but the arc of the melody is anything but vague. Billie Joe will be happy to stand in for the Gallagher brothers (who were themselves standing in for Lennon and McCartney) until further notice.

In 2003, when she was just nineteen years old, Miranda Lambert finished third on "Nashville Star," the ...