Green Day - Dookie
Green Day
Dookie
Release Date: February 1st, 1994
Label: Reprise Records
Review by Jared Stossel
By the end of 1994, the “grunge” era would be dead, blown into the wind with the likes of the other dominant rock genres (or fads, depending on who you talk to) that came before it. Green Day would lead the charge of this next movement, pop-punk, not with a whimper, but with a bang. With two full-length records under their belt, both released on punk-indie label Lookout! Records, the Bay Area trio had built up an exorbitant amount of songwriting prowess and live performance capability. They were touring harder and writing more than ever, becoming one of the tightest sounding acts in all of rock by the early 1990s. No one would suspect that the fledgling group – vocalist/guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Dirnt, and drummer Tre Cool – would emerge from Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios with a record that would change the overall face of popular music. No one suspected that a band with songs about being too bored to masturbate, growing up a disappointment, and therapy sessions would go on to supersede the introspective, poetic stylings of lyricists like Kurt Cobain. No one suspected Dookie.
It's almost a right of passage to become a punk band and then immediately be labeled a “sell out” when a major label begins to take interest. Green Day not only pivoted from indie label darlings to the little fish in a big pond upon signing to Reprise Records, but they managed to attain popularity without really changing up their sound. Some would go on to say that it sounded too polished compared to its predecessors 39/Smooth and Kerplunk, but Dookie truly sounds like three kids having the time of their life making punk rock music on the largest scale they could fathom. The band’s pairing with producer Rob Cavallo (whose work has also included albums like American Idiot and My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade) worked incredibly well. Cavallo initially courted the band by avoiding the usual label bullshit (take em out to dinner, schmooze em, tell them you’ll make their dreams come true), opting instead to jam Beatles covers for an hour.
Despite taking some time to get out of their shells upon entering the Berkeley studio they would call home for almost a month, that anxious energy lent itself to what makes Dookie such an incredible album so many years later. Armstrong isn’t so much apoplectic as he is disinterested in the world around him. The words “I declare I don’t care no more/I’m burning up and out and growing bored” from the opening song “Burnout” could act as Dookie’s thesis statement. Hell, the opening bass riff for “Longview” was created out of boredom and copious amounts of LSD. It reflected not only the band, but an entire generation that was finding itself disassociating from the world around them. That generation didn’t want to cause chaos, they didn’t want to burn everything down, and they didn’t need a bunch of musicians telling them about the state of the world and how they should feel; they just wanted to smoke weed, watch TV, and get by.
While boredom acts as the brain, anxiety and panic are at the heart of Dookie, with songs like “Basket Case”, “She”, and “Coming Clean” touching on feelings of insecurity, sexual confusion, and overall fear of uncertainty. Relationships both past and present are brought up on “Sassafras Roots” and “When I Come Around”, with the latter acting as one of the biggest songs of the band’s career, and the closest thing to a down-tempo ballad as one might find on Dookie.
All of these lyrics are wrapped up in what at the time was known as “bubblegum pop-punk” packaging. A powerful wall of the punchiest guitar tones, excellent bass tones and boomy drums surround their words. It’s a sound that would be further enhanced by acts of the 1990s like The Offspring and Blink-182, but Green Day would be forever responsible for catapulting into the mainstream with such aplomb. Even the album artwork itself was disarming to the casual listener; a collage based off of Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue in the 1990s, an amalgamation of pop culture, stoner visions, and geographical land markers (the oil refineries of the band’s hometown of Rodeo, CA can be spotted), and poop jokes assaulted the senses of anyone who walked into their local record shop. To this day, it’s still a work of art.
Thirty years later, Dookie has gone double platinum and still holds up as one of the greatest records in not only pop-punk, but the rock genre itself. Green Day’s position in history is that of the torchbearer of pop-punk, one of the originators of the oft-debated subgenre, and yet nothing on the album feels like it has aged poorly or disintegrated with time. If anything, it’s become a fitting, anthemic collection of songs that still act as a siren song for new generations of daydreamers. Long live.
