Green Day’s Dookie Turns 25: Celebrating Pop Punk’s Most Important Album
Written by: Tyler Hypnarowski
February 1st, 2019
The early 90s was an interesting era for punk rock. Stalwarts like The Clash, Black Flag, The Dead Kennedys and others had long broken up. All the while, the unprecedented rise of grunge, a descendent of punk music, was drastically stealing the attention of youth listeners. And while bands like The Offspring and Bad Religion were beginning to carve out their niches and bring punk rock to the masses, there was still a bit of a musical vacuum to be filled, at least in the sense of mainstream appeal.
So as Sid Vicious rolled in his grave, the seeds of pop punk that were planted years back had come to full bloom by February 1st, 1994 and the release of Green Day’s Dookie.
The origins of pop punk can be traced back to bands in the 80s such as Descendents, The Replacements and even the aforementioned Bad Religion, who took the the distorted riffs and crashing cymbals of punk and added some softer melodies and a bit of lyrical finesse. Trading in abrasive punk battle cries for more emotional and interpersonal songwriting was certainly a recipe for success.
Along came Green Day, a rowdy young band from the San Francisco Bay Area. Dookie was actually their third record, preceded by 1990’s 39/Smooth and 1991’s Kerplunk. Both records sound a lot like Dookie; fast guitar, rumbling bass, and sweet power melodies behind Billie Joe Armstrong’s distinct vocals. You could probably mix and match a bunch of the songs from all three records and none would sound too out of place on either one. What Dookie had that those other two didn’t, were the hits. And maybe just a little bit of that extra polish and finesse while seemingly arriving just at the right time in the musical landscape.
“Basket Case”, “When I Come Around” and “Longview” were some of the undisputed kings of radio all through the 90s and into the 2000s. “Welcome To Paradise”, another smash hit was actually originally released on Kerplunk and then re-recorded for Dookie, rendering my earlier statement about the first two records lacking the hit power somewhat obsolete.
But you get my point. Dookie had that crossover capability, bringing punk back into the mainstream discussion in a way that perhaps it hasn’t been since The Ramones Blitzkrieg Bop’d their way into being a worldwide phenomenon nearly 20 years earlier.
The hits were supplemented nicely by other tunes including “Burnout”, “Pulling Teeth” and perhaps one of the band’s biggest gems, “She”, as recognized by the songwriter himself. “I will play ‘She’ for the rest of my life,” Armstrong told Rolling Stone in 2014. “It has aged well with me.”
Then there’s a tune like “F.O.D.”, with it’s lovely acoustic beginning that kicks into a raw punk climax. A perfect way to conclude an album and sum it all up at the same time.
Dookie would hit on all ends of the spectrum lyrically. At times it was introspective and depressing (“Sometimes I give myself the creeps. Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. It all keeps adding up, I think I’m cracking up…”). Sometimes it had that ironic and self-depreciating humor (“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 fucking lonely..) Then sometimes the lyrics were pretty damn punk rock (I’m taking you all down with me. Explosives duck taped to my spine, nothings gonna change my mind. I won’t listen to anyone’s last words, there’s nothing left for you to say. You’ll be dead soon anyway…”)
Words that the kids could relate to, no matter how crude, immature or impulsive they may sound. Green Day sounded and looked like the guys you went to school with, saw at the mall, skated at your skatepark. That look, connection and sound would open up doors for other pop punk bands down the line to thrive in that market. Millions of suburban kids were just about over grunge and ready to trade in their older brother’s flannel shirt for a pair of skate shoes and a Hot Topic t-shirt.
Blink 182 led that charge and would build their own legacy before groups like Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte, Taking Back Sunday, Saves The Day, and others further grew the genre. Some of those latter bands could also be tied in with the emo rise of the 2000s, which certainly developed in part from earlier pop punk sounds.
But through it all Green Day was there, having released nine albums since that seminal 1994 record. However it will always be Dookie that catapulted them into rock royalty. “Back then, I just wanted to write songs I could be proud of and be able to play in five years” Armstrong recently said.
Now 25 years since being released, the songs of Dookie have not only made him proud, but likely quite rich in the process. The album sold over 20 million copies and the songs of which continue to pack the houses anywhere Green Day goes. Not to say their post-Dookie material isn’t as strong, because much of it is, but anyone who goes to a Green Day concert and isn’t looking forward to hearing “When I Come Around” is only lying to themselves. You hear the song and it’s like being a kid again every time.
Dookie was one of those albums that came around and changed things in music. Perhaps not on the level of say, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Club Band or Nevermind, but it’s impact on the evolution of rock as a whole can’t be overlooked. It wasn’t your father’s punk rock, but the sound was here to stay and it put Green Day on the map as one of the biggest bands of their time.
