American band Green Day stated yesterday that they are still a punk rock band, despite their commercial success.

Green Day had been criticized lately for selling themselves easily, forgetting their believes and the true meaning of punk. But frontman Billie Joe Armstrong denied accusations, arguing they never forget who they are.

He says: "Sometimes I think we've become totally redundant because we're this big band now, we've made a lot of money - we're not punk rock any more. But then I think about it and just say, 'You can take us out of out a punk rock environment, but you can't take the punk rock out of us.'
When we started it was a proven fact that punk could not get popular. So we never played punk rock to get famous."

Green Day members are credited as being the pioneers of the pop punk genre (arguably along with other bands) on the Lookout! label popularizing the genre to the mainstream with the 1994 album "Dookie". The album has been certified diamond (10 million copies shipped) in the United States since its release.

Their second best-selling album, "American Idiot", came a decade after "Dookie", in 2004, enjoying huge critical and fan acclaim.

A year after its release, it has been certified quadruple platinum in the US, has sold 8 million copies world-wide and won the band a Grammy Award for "Best Rock Album".

Green Day swept the MTV Video Music Awards 2005 winning seven out of eight nominations: "Video of the Year", "Best Rock Video", "Best Group Video", "Best Direction", "Best Editing", "Best Cinematography" - all for "Boulevard of Broken Dreams", and the "Viewer's Choice Award" for "American Idiot".