Dookie by Green Day (Dookie - Green Day)

Member Name: Lichfield1979

Product:	Dookie - Green Day
Date:	23/10/08 (356 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The five singles in particular, although the standard is consistently high throughout.

Disadvantages: Notwithstanding the strength of the material, the band's genre bending may prove divisive for some.

Dookie by Green Day (1994)

Billie Joe Armstrong - Vocals, Guitar
Mike Dirnt - Bass Guitar
Tre Cool - Drums

This was not the first Green Day record but it marked their major label debut and also signalled Billie Joe Armstrong was one of the most talented pop-songwriters of his generation. MTV hyped the single Longview to the gills but Basket Case has probably endured as the album's most famous song. Dookie has sold something in the order of fifteen million units worldwide. It was ten years before American Idiot matched the critical and commercial success of this record again, but in the interim the band continued to have hit singles and were undoubtedly one of the most influential rock bands of their era, spawning a legion of imitators, for better or worse. As such, their 1990s American peers are to be found in the rarefied stratosphere populated by such acts as Metallica, Foo Fighters, Pearl Jam, REM, Weezer, Pavement, Smashing Pumpkins, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Nirvana. In the UK they influenced Busted and McFly.

My favourite ever review of Green Day posited that Billie Joe's singing persona sounds like an American pretending to be a British man pretending to be an American, and that's probably not far wrong. Despite the frequently alleged Britishness of these punkish endeavours, if I absolutely had to compare Green Day to a punk band I'd probably pick an American one, The Ramones, and if I were trying to detect British influences in the songwriter's musical attitude, I might tentatively venture for The Who or Black Sabbath. Although die hard fans would probably seek to identify the band with a lineage tracing back through The Clash, The Jam, The Sex Pistols et al, Green Day have also clearly absorbed the lessons of 1980s alternative acts such as The Replacements and Husker Du, and fused these influences within nominally "punk" frameworks, but also alongside a deeply commercial instinct that frequently incites criticism from the old guard. It would be fair to say though that corporate rock has rarely sounded this competently crowd pleasing, so I find it hard to begrudge Billie Joe his populism. Like Anthony Kiedis, another front man of a band with a reputation for harder stuff, Armstrong knows how to write a great tune with unexpected but simple dimensions.

One - Burnout

Burnout presents the illusion of having rougher surfaces than it really does and fairly bounces along thanks to a tight and snappy rhythm section as the vocal postures with cultural affectations. It's a tuneful and lightweight two-minute pop song with a simple but effective hook. "I'm not growing up, I'm just burning out." The lyrics seem typically calculated to appeal to bored and disaffected suburban teenagers with pocket money to spend but I'm all in favour of giving the people what they want. They actually have a fair bit of poetic depth in this instance. Elsewhere, there's a dry sense of humour that prevents the songs sounding myopic, and, over time, it would become apparent that Billie Joe actually had a sizeable social conscience, only directed at the personal politics of conflicted teenagers and young adults' inner lives, a sphere over which music may very well have a real influence, as opposed to the empty agitprop of faux rebellions a generation earlier, which were impotent to effect the national systems they railed against and which served only to further disenfranchise people from participating in society, before eventually having their values co-opted into the commercial norm on disagreeable terms anyway. When Green Day began to sound more overtly political after September 11th they really did seem to speak with the voice of youthful suburbia and that cultural cache was sincere and earned, precisely because of the inclusiveness of their music about alienation. It's a grave pity so many of their less talented "emo" and "nu-metal" imitators have become so fashionable whilst remaining unremittingly shallow, earnestly aping the style but not the substance. At least Busted and McFly know they're a bubble gum pop act.

Two - Having A Blast

This actually sounds a lot like some of the rockier numbers from college radio bands like the Gin Blossoms from this era and has a catchy melody and plenty of rhythmic propulsion. The words aren't as good to this one but the sentiment is accessible. Chalk it up as another short but great pop song.

Three - Chump

The band could almost pass as a speedier 1980s REM song on this occasion. It takes a while to get past Billie Joe's intonation and really get a feel for his performance but he has a likeable voice once you adjust to it and realise he's not going to vary his delivery very much. It's a throwaway lyric about relationship issues, one that gets by on the universality of its theme. Although this song is under three minutes it actually feels padded out a little with a slowly quiet lull that does eventually pay off by leading into a nicely percussive climax. The song neatly transitions into the next one without breaking.

Four - Longview

The monster breakout hit that made the band famous employs the type of loud then quiet dynamic that the Pixies and Nirvana favoured but the bouncy rubbery bass line has a more cartoonish character and the guitars only pretend to get noisy. The words "Sit around and watch the phone, but no one's calling / Call me pathetic, call me what you will / My mother says to get a job / But she don't like the one she's got / When masturbation's lost its fun / You're f*ck*ng breaking" pretty much sums up the ethos of the whole record. Billie Joe manages to convey an air of wide-eyed vulnerability in his listlessness and seems open to self-examination whilst not feeling entirely to blame for the circumstances. "I've got no motivation / Where is my motivation?" he sings, and the band claimed in interviews they wrote the original version of Longview on LSD. This is the longest song on the record at a shade under four minutes. I've not seen it for about fourteen years but if memory serves the promotional video featured a guy cracking up in front of the television in a suitably grubby apartment before trashing his couch with a knife, as if in a pillow fight with himself.

Five - Welcome To Paradise

Originally featured on the band's second album Kerplunk, Welcome To Paradise was re-recorded for inclusion on Dookie and was released as a single. This one also clocks in at over three and a half minutes. The lyrics deal with Billie Joe's experience of moving out of his mother's home and squatting with a community of people in an abandoned warehouse in Oakland, an image that also appears to have featured in the Jesus of Suburbia video a decade later. "This sudden fear has left me trembling / Cause now it seems that I am out here on my own." The punk influenced musical structure of the song captures elements of paranoia whilst remaining warm and tuneful, and the backing vocals sound a bit like the kind of faux Brian Wilson stuff Mike Mills favours in REM.

Six - Pulling Teeth

This song sounds like a cross between a laid back alt-country band and something Fountains of Wayne might rustle up. For two and a half minutes it stands out as a pleasant enough oddity.

Seven - Basket Case

One of Green Day's most iconic signature tunes, Basket Case is full of big-hearted pop sentiment underneath the quick tempo guitar noise and alienated lyrics. The video was set in a mental institution but was played for colourful laughs. "I am one of those / Melodramatic fools / Neurotic to the bone / No doubt about it." Rhythmically tight and dripping with hooks.

Eight - She

The band maintain a fairly brisk tempo but the vocal is essentially a ballad even when the sound fills out with more guitar for the rousing chorus. "Are you locked up in a world / That's been planned out for you?" It's a simple composition but catchy as hell; and short, at a little over two minutes. Enjoyed success as a single.

Nine - Sassafras Roots

Once again the vocal weaves a melody around guitars which are fuzzy and warm but the drums maintain a slightly more frantic edge, accompanied by quite a lush sounding bass line. "I'm a waste like you / With nothing else to do / May I waste your time too?"

Ten - When I Come Around

The fifth single is one of the best tracks on the record and again appropriates an unashamedly pop mentality despite the band's nominally punk aesthetic. It's also not afraid to hammer one big dumb riff into the ground throughout the whole song, because it works. The guitars have shades of the Smashing Pumpkins but the production is sparse and spacious. Sometimes the simplest ideas really are the best.

Eleven - Coming Clean

The record draws towards the finishing line with three songs in a row that are each barely more than a minute and a half long. Later on in his career Billie Joe would find the confidence to string multiple ideas like these together into a single composition. This is pleasant enough but hasn't really got enough throttle to it and never really leads very far musically. The lyrics deal with sexual ambiguity.

Twelve - Emenius Sleepus

Rhythmically this sounds a lot like the last track and so there is a natural progression to the sequencing and this does have a bit more energy about it. The dynamics also manage to be more explorative with a nice interlude from the drummer. The lyrics are about how friends can change over time.

Thirteen - In The End

A noisy but ultimately gentle guitar thrash out that never loses sight of the slightly countrified college rock melody and again lets the rhythm section get a groove going for a while when vocals and guitar take a step backward. Finishes rather promptly, as noted above.

Fourteen - F.O.D. / All By Myself

The record concludes with a song that starts out with an acoustic guitar framework and vocal reminiscent of an earlier one, a slowed down version of a section of Basket Case perhaps, played quietly with echoes of She. Eventually this bursts to life with electric guitars and a rhythm section. This finishes after two and three quarter minutes. But we come back for a hidden track a while later, a comedic sounding ditty sung by Tre Cool and accompanied by brightly twinkling acoustic guitar plucking.


Dookie won the Grammy Award for best alternative album in 1995. Rolling Stone magazine placed it at # 193 in their 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Two years later, Spin magazine considered it the 44th best record released between 1985 and 2005. Longview was nominated for best video and best new artist at the 1995 MTV Video Music Awards. In 2006 BBC Radio One listeners voted Basket Case "The Greatest Punk Song Of All Time" and a lot of aging and retired punks probably felt angrier than they had done for a very long time.

Summary: One of the very best pop records of the 1990s.