Insomniac (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

Green Day

explicit

Released on 10/10/1995 by Reprise
Main artists: Green Day
Genre: Alternative & Indie

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Green Day's fourth album, Insomniac was originally released in October 1995, following on from Dookie which was released one year previously, and whose monster success (more than twenty-five million copies sold to date) could have sent more than one band off their heads. But, rather than repeating some magic formula and hoping for the same miracle, given that sales of Dookie had already passed ten million, Billie Joe Armstrong and his acolytes did the opposite and refocused, delivering a more aggressive and darker work, in a word: more punk! And the album's themes matched this idea, speaking of alienation, anxiety and drugs. Maybe the idea was also to regain credibility and win back early fans who might have been tempted to desert after Dookie appeared far too popular to be trusted. A savvy critic wrote at the time that Insomniac was to Green Day what In Utero was to Nirvana, after the global success of Nevermind. That is, a return to a darker, harder side. A return to the roots, in short. Bassist Mike Dirnt recalls: "I felt at the time that there was a real urgency to what we were doing. There was a real urgency to stake our claim and say, 'No, we belong here.' It was really important to us to make sure people knew that we weren’t just a flash in the pan..." Billie Joe Armstrong also wanted to press on without asking too many questions: "what I really wanted to do was keep working, and keep writing songs...I didn’t really stop and smell the roses". And here they are again, throwing out fourteen tracks as if they were chopping logs, with no let-up, keeping concentrated. Twenty-five years later, the intensity and concision of each song still works. The lyrics are steeped in pessimism and anger, as on Panic Song with its rather raw worldview: "a sick machine breeding a mass of shit". This track is also inspired by the panic attacks suffered by Billie Joe Armstrong due to her out-of-control anxiety... As an aside, before settling on Insomniac as an album title, Green Day would have preferred Jesus Christ Supermarket. Another aside: note the album cover and its multiple nods to the Dead Kennedys. Indeed, the title of the collage made for the cover by a one Winston Smith is God Told Me to Skin You Alive, a reference to the first words of a song by the Dead Kennedys, I Kill Children (1980). In addition, the image of the dentist used in the collage can also be found in an illustration for the Dead Kennedys' album Plastic Surgery Disasters (1982)... This edition, celebrating Insomniac's 25th anniversary, also includes eight tracks from the album taken from a concert in Prague on 26 March, 1996, showcasing the band's on-stage vigour and energy. © Yan Céh / Qobuz

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Insomniac (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition)

Green Day

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