Dookie (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

Green Day

explicit

Released on 01/02/1994 by Reprise
Main artists: Green Day
Genre: Alternative & Indie

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Suburban boredom has never sounded cool quite like it does on Dookie. From the opening salvo of "Burnout" ("I'm not growing up/ I'm just burning out"), Green Day's arrival in the big market combined a stunning sense of youthful wont and power pop shrugs as they peeled through what it meant to loathe everything about their surroundings. Like contemporaries on their former Lookout! label, Green Day trusted a certain set of chords—ones that defined pop-punk—but unlike their Ramones-worshiping peers, the band didn't fully rely on them. Arguably the band revered Nick Lowe just as much as Joey Ramone. "Chump" ends with a searing coda that comes off like a live outtake more than a planned recurrence thanks to drummer Tre Cool's wunderkind pocket control. That it leads into Mike Dirnt's inimitable "Longview" bassline echoes how incredible this record sounded amidst the fodder of other breakout pop-punks before and to come.

If you could imagine someone singing the words to your life in a way that made your mother search your record collection and burn a Queers tape, it's because Green Day probably smoothed out that route to your collection. Singing about masturbation on MTV culled the worst in parental control. For those lucky enough to have older siblings or to have been on the Kerplunk train early, this record may have annoyed you until the radio stopped blaring the singles over and over.

Conversely for those who had never heard Green Day, Dookie provided an introduction that immediately impacted everything. "Welcome to Paradise" earmarked a sarcasm that the media postulated as above the teenager's head. "Dear mother can you hear me laughing" was as impactful as The Clash's Lee "Scratch" Perry cop-bashing whether the old guard believed it or not. The kids had the time to listen to Billie Joe Armstrong whine just the same as their parents did Bob Dylan's whimsical faux-etry about the world's fate.

There was also time for the country-tinged "She," which dipped into its furious 4-chord chorus accentuated by Dirnt's best Tony Lombardo licks. "Coming Clean" may as well join "Parents Just Don't Understand" on the pubescent Mount Rushmore with its 95 seconds of defining how nothing an adult says makes any sense until, you know, you become one. Dookie had one element nailed: this generation of kids felt way more grown up than they were. Nineties teens could have tattooed "17 and strung out on confusion" on their chests if their parents were a little cooler about it. There's great irony in "Coming Clean" and "In the End" catcalling the same mental battles the previous generations fought against their parents (subbing the Gulf War for Vietnam and malls for school dances).

Of course, as all art ages, the perspectives have to change. Countless articles denoting the era—and Dookie's influence on the era—have been written trying to capture or recapture Green Day's grasp on angst. The listeners and the band grew up; Dookie didn't. The record holds the same message as always. Shit was weird for kids in '94 and it's even weirder approaching '24. As a new generation finds their way to whatever soothsayers they believe project their insecurities, one can only hope they can hold dear their "moment-when-'F.O.D.'-explodes." Our lips still hurt from imitating the patented Billie Joe snarl those two thousand times before. © Jeff Laughlin/Qobuz

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Dookie (30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

Green Day

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