Mike Dirnt of Green Day talked with Rolling Stone:
Well, it’s funny you say that, because [the Saviors track] “The American Dream Is Killing Me” was written by Billie almost four years ago. But we all knew it was just low-hanging fruit. We’re not a parody of who we are, and songs like that need time to be fleshed out. If that means just sitting back and letting life happen, so be it. And it was one of the last things we recorded. Rob’s like, “What else do you got?” As we get towards the end of recording, it was two songs. It was that one and “Father to a Son.” And those two songs, Rob’s like, “Oh, you’ve got to record those.”
And then Billie had to go in for “American Dream” and just deep dive on the lyrics, and just tweak a few things here and there. But “The American Dream Is Killing Me” was the line a while back ago. We were like, “Yeah, it’s just not the right time.”