Dookie

By 1994, grunge had introduced mainstream culture to a punk-informed sound that was cathartic and exciting, but not exactly fun. The floodgates of alternative rock opened by Nirvana exposed Middle America to bands following in the angsty, grim footsteps of the Melvins and the Wipers, bringing in an entirely new idea of what aggressive music could be, but focusing more on tormented emotions than melody. Enter Green Day, one of many energetic pop-punk bands that had been thriving in independent circles as grunge exploded above ground, with a sound built on no-frills song structures played at hyper-fast tempos, but sweetened with tight vocal harmonizing borrowed from the Jam and pop hooks with the same stunning simplicity as the Beatles. Green Day perfected this winning formula on their first two albums (released with indie cornerstone Lookout Records), and with Dookie, their third studio full-length and first for major-label Reprise Records, the only thing that really changed was the recording budget. Dookie was an almost immediate commercial breakthrough, perhaps in part because mainstream audiences had largely never heard anything like it before. The album produced charting hits with "Longview," a loungy ode to boredom and self-love, the neurotic punk rock cardio workout "Basket Case," and most successfully "When I Come Around," a slacker punk answer to the power ballad that cracked the Top Ten and remained ever-present on the radio waves throughout 1995. While these songs were highlights, the entirety of Dookie is just as strong. The way the tracks fly by nervously in barrages of buzzing guitars and half-sung, half-sneered vocals from Billie Joe Armstrong intentionally aims to obscure how precise their arrangements are. From the bright blasting of opening track "Burnout" to the happy-go-lucky harmonies of torture fantasy "Pulling Teeth," Green Day delight in smart subversion throughout Dookie and refuse to take themselves too seriously at any point, even when crafting perfect pop songs. The bands lightning-fast tunefulness and irreverent attitude were a welcome change from the dour wallowing of grunge, and even the songs here about heavier subjects are delivered with a smirking, adolescent flippancy. The masses were finally ready for just this kind of punk rock when Dookie arrived, and the album not only marked Green Days turn from basement trio to global rock stars, but also ushered in a wider collective understanding of punk that would cascade into the next generations of young, loud, and snotty melody-makers like blink-182, then Fall Out Boy, then Paramore, and so on. Its a turning point for alternative rock that still feels as vibrant decades later, and captures Green Day in a liminal state between obscurity and an almost impossibly unlikely level of fame, unaware of what was to come and simply working with the same raw materials they always had to make their next record one they could be proud of. ~ Fred Thomas

Green Day couldnt have had a blockbuster without Nirvana, but Dookie wound up being nearly as revolutionary as Nevermind, sending a wave of imitators up the charts and setting the tone for the mainstream rock of the mid-90s. Like Nevermind, this was accidental success, the sound of a promising underground group suddenly hitting its stride just as they got their first professional, big-budget, big-label production. Really, thats where the similarities end, since if Nirvana were indebted to the weirdness of indie rock, Green Day were straight-ahead punk revivalists through and through. They were products of the underground pop scene kept alive by such protagonists as All, yet what they really loved was the original punk, particularly such British punkers as the Jam and Buzzcocks. On their first couple records, they showed promise, but with Dookie, they delivered a record that found Billie Joe Armstrong bursting into full flower as a songwriter, spitting out melodic ravers that could have comfortably sat alongside Singles Going Steady, but infused with an ironic self-loathing popularized by Nirvana, whose clean sound on Nevermind is also emulated here. Where Nirvana had weight, Green Day are deliberately adolescent here, treating nearly everything as joke and having as much fun as snotty punkers should. They demonstrate a bit of depth with "When I Come Around," but that just varies the pace slightly, since the key to this is their flippant, infectious attitude -- something they maintain throughout the record, making Dookie a stellar piece of modern punk that many tried to emulate but nobody bettered. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine