Cigarettes and Valentines was the album that was supposed to follow Green Day's Warning. The record was nearly complete in 2003, before the master tapes for it were allegedly stolen from the studio. After the loss of Cigarettes and Valentines, Green Day went on to create American Idiot, which released just a year later in 2004, and ended up becoming one of the band's best performing and most well received records to date.
Not much is known about Cigarettes and Valentines. Only a few songs have been resurfaced by the band in live performances; even the names of most tracks are unknown. Green Day's described the album's material as "good stuff," though Billie Joe Armstrong, the band's lead, has referred to the loss of Cigarettes and Valentines as a "blessing in disguise," saying that the material on the album wasn't "maximum Green Day," and that the theft allowed them to focus on American Idiot.