Dookie

Dookie

It’s a good song. I liked it. Not sure I needed to hear it 15 times, but I liked it.

Loved it, holds up. The bangers outweigh the filler. Catchy tunes with a bit of a punk edge. This album was like eating a box of sour patch kids.

Should’ve quit here

Tight!!! Defined the band forever more.

Pas mon style mais quand même très bon album surtout avec "Welcome to paradise" et "Basket case". Très cohérent dans leurs morceaux.

I hadn’t paid any attention to Green Day before starting on the generator project. I found out a bit about them when I was assigned American Idiot - which I didn’t like. I like this album much better :-) The punk pop is quite okay (according to my personal taste), the lyrics have some interest (and I don’t mind that its social criticism is not focused like some other punk - tempted to say “UK punk” but it wasn’t all perfect by any means). The riffs seem fresh, compared to American Idiot - easier to do breakthrough album than the Xth follow-up. I acknowledge the album’s popularity, and its influence on music scenes, both legit reasons it’s good to be across the album. This is better than Okay, I’ll generously call it Good, 7/10.

I’ve heard this before. I never got this album and wasn’t a huge fan of Green Day in high school. If it had come out in 1991 or 92 it probably would’ve been one of of those life changing albums like it was for some of my younger friends, but by this time I had big Opinions about punk rock and thought these guys were sellouts. Though I did like Longview. It’s been maybe 30 years since I last listened to this all the way through so let’s see if my opinion changes. So there are some very good songs on here and there are some that go in one ear and out the other, which I’m sure would be memorable if I bought this in high school. The good ones outnumber those by a lot and they have a lot of range compared to other punk bands that were getting big at the time, though I don’t think it’s fair to mix them in with blink 182 and the fat wreck chords and bands and all the other pop punk bands since they’re not really pop punk. A few song have that sound which is probably why they’re not memorable. Altogether it’s a really good album, maybe I’ll warm up to the rest of the songs after a few more listens.

1. Burnout - 4/10 2. Having A Blast - 4/10 3. Chump - 7/10 4. Longview - 4/10 5. Welcome to Paradise - 6/10 6. Pulling Teeth - 5/10 7. Basket Case - 6/10 8. She - 5/10 9. Sassafras Roots - 5/10 10. When I Come Around - 4/10 11. Coming Clean - 3/10 12. Emenius Sleepus - 2/10 13. In the End - 3/10 14. F.O.D. - 3/10 15. All by Myself - 4/10 OVERALL - 4.3/10

grin dej vidim kao marka i tv morone iz anđela tri, sebe vidim kao jadnog čika božu iz staračkog doma koji ne izdrži refren

smorio sam se ko plovak - 2

Бест оф поп панк, да је среће да се још овако дрогирају

Sladak album, Kao da imam 16 godina i pijem kafu u brodolomu sam se osećala eto, Vinks

Rating: 7/10 First listen: No Would listen again: Yes Fav track: Welcome to paradise Comment: PAY ATTENTION TO THE CRACKED STREETS AND THE BROKEN HOMES!! SOME CALL IT SLUMS SOME CALL IT NIIIICEEEE!!!

Reminded me of being a kid, as this was huge when I was in sixth grade. Not my favorite, by any stretch, but a nice revisit.

This album is super interesting to me because when it first came out, I wasn't a huge fan. In fact, I wasn't really a big Green Day fan in general. At the time, I was just much more into darker music and just never got into them. Flash forward several decades later and I feel like I have a new appreciation for them and for their music. So, I really enjoyed listening to this one. It's full of hits and I knew I would know all of those songs. But I was surprised that I recognized some of the non-hits as well. Does it all sound a little bit the same? Yes. Is it a little immature? Yes. But this is a classic album that set the standard for a ton of bands and artists that followed, so it 100% deserves to be on the list.

I was not a fan of this album when it first released, but nearly everyone I knew was. As it happens, the nostalgia is real with this one, because although I still don't enjoy the music, I have grown to love the album, because it was such a constant part of my high school days.

Very good pop punk that doesn’t waste the listener’s time, with a bunch of short and memorable songs. Green Day’s lyrics in this era aren’t drenched with deep symbolism or hidden meanings, but rather offer a straightforward relatability that I’ve always enjoyed this band for.

classic green day if i had been into this in junior high i probably would've grown up cooler 💥burnout 💥having a blast 💥longview 💥welcome to paradise 💥basket case 💥she 💥when i come around

Man, when I was a kid this thing was fucking everywhere. If you were a kid in the burbs, you had this album. Green Day is just a non-factor for me. I don't hate them, I don't really like them...I just hardly ever interact with them. And while this album was something I listened to constantly when I was 13, 14 it's not an album that I ever go back to. Doesn't mean I'll turn it off if it comes on the radio, but for whatever reason I just don't revisit this album like I do other music from this era.

Ich wet dem so es 4i drucke. Die meiste tracks sind aber leider wück nöd so tuff gsi :(

I <3 Dookie

This was baby cam’s first Green Day album and made me into the person I am today

Dookie dookie dookie

I loved When I come around, welcome to paradise and she. The rest were okay, I felt some songs were really just unnecessary fillers. Others were good but towards the end of the album I struggled to actively listen to the songs because of the back-to-back repetitive pop-punk sounds which sound the same every freaking time. As a shorter album, or singles, it would be great, but as an album each song loses its value.

Not my taste

Enjoyed this! Punchy and to the point. Which apparently is my sweet spot. Not life changing enough for top marks but a positive experience.

Actually pretty good. Not too melodramatic and quite a few bops to keep it interesting. 3.5/5 -> 4/5

Green Day fand ich immer okay. Stimmt immer noch. Kleinste gemeinsame Nenner Musik.

I'm less than 3 months into this journey of listening to an album per day and, interestingly enough, "dookie" is how I would describe about 1/3 of what I've been assigned so far. Sorry jazz fans and 60s psychadelic rock, I just can't get into you. Dookie is not how I would describe Dookie, though, since it has 4 absolute bangers on it and the rest of the album flows cohesively around them. 5 easy stars on this one.

Hard shit

3.5/5

What a complicated album to critically think about. Undeniably influential, but was it really good or bad for punk? There was always pretty poppy punk that didn't focus on politics, but they really shattered the need for punk to be independent in some way, with every facet of their process now including top dog producers and commercial promotion. The music to me, as a big fan in middle school, comes off as so foundational even after I tried to strip all the Hot Topic out of my taste, with interludes like in Welcome to Paradise being chilling, and songs like Longview show a growing creativity for putting some more color in their punk. The pace is perfect too, they put down 10 heavy hitting tracks right at the beginning and end with some fun fillers, better than most pop punker's best. Who cares about the broader scope after bumping this whole thing in a hype moment? I'm sure that even though they've gone full liberal, their music is still probably a great trojan horse for introducing some real leftist and human-focused ideas.

Classic

Took me back -- my first parental advisory album. Just fantastic from top to bottom.

As a younger man when this released this was, on paper, something I should dislike. Short, sharp poppy punk with fun lyrics. It was and is so much greater than the sum of its parts.

This is an easy one, Green Day are my jam! I was introduced to this album at a friends 18th Birthday party August 1994 and I was hooked. There are songs on this album I could listen to every day and not get bored. Saw Green Day for the first time in 2025 (Sydney, Aust) and they smashed it. One of the best concerts I’ve been to with regards to performance (played full throttle for close to 4 hours with only a five minute break), production and crowd vibe. I was with a friend who has seen way more concerts than me and he had the same opinion.

#128 - Green Day - Dookie ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I listened to this twice today for the project, in addition to the hundreds of times that I’ve listened to it since its release in 1994. Dookie is pop-punk at its absolute finest. This is surely one of the best albums of the 90s. Upon its release, I listened to it on cassette in my car a lot. And the thing is, the music is absolutely not dated at all when listening in 2026. It’s still fresh. It’s up tempo and fun and rebellious and everything that punk and rock are all about. I will say that I do not like media that promotes and celebrates drug use. But I try to ignore that to the extent that I can and just enjoy the music. And this music is VERY enjoyable.

A 90s skater punk classic, building off the ground laid by bands like SNFU. This whole album is classic, but Longview has always been the best track for me, followed closely by Welcome to Paradise--love the breakdown in that track. I remember learning how to play Basket Case as one of my first songs on guitar. I also remember being amazed by the cover of the CD when I bought this when I was like 14. In some ways I'm torn about this album, though. As great as albums like Dookie and Offspring's Smash are, I don't really like how pop-centric they later became, and I definitely hated all the wannabe bands like Blink 182 that stretched this pop-punk even further into the radio-friendly category. I guess, to be fair, that happened to all rock around the mid- to late-90s--softened up and radio friendly. Still though, a classic. 5/5

One of the big albums from the pop punk explosion

What I would consider the quintessential sound of the 2000's garage band punk rock sound that millions of kids adopted into their identities. Not my favorite style at the base line but they are playing a consistent vision and I still enjoy the singles/ hits now as I did back in the day. Vocals are iconic with that slightly nasal whining. Would expect to see this on the High School prom stage with blond hair highlights and lots of bracelets.

I definitely like this album but I can’t understand how it is regularly considered their best.

It’s not for me but I can definitely see why people like it. It certainly has good energy.

enjoyed this quite a bit but does start to sound very samey

Good 90s rock

Ahhh. Nasally, mumbling, adolescent punk rock. I am at peace.

I think the only good Green Day album is American Idiot. This dragged on too long, even with the hits

I’ve already been familiar with a few songs from Green Day. So getting a chance to listen to this album was amazing, and for an album named dookie, it’s actually the opposite!! I really love the albums upbeat energy that’s apparent with the chorus of the guitar, the lively beats of drums, and the nasally voice, it really helps make the songs very catchy. Something I wasn’t too much a fan of though was the fact that some of the songs sounded pretty similar, so it kinda made it hard for me to tell which song I was listening to. But even then I still very much enjoyed the album! :) A few favorites of mine were: Longview, When I Come Around, and F.O.D. Overall, a 4.5/5, a pretty great album from Green Day as expected!!

Such powerful fun pop punk! The rhythm section is amazing. Drumming in particular boosts the energetic feel of the record so much. With 'when I come around' there is a good song, but also kind of a hint about the boring generic stadium rock band they would become later. Loads to love here though

La verdad que la mayoría de las canciones de green day me parecen iguales. Igual el disco me gustó, hasta agregué Basket Case, que no la tenía.

Nostalgic album. Reminds me of middle school taking electric bass lessons from Charlie (forgot his last name). My first intro to Green Day was American Idiot, but there are some tracks here that are equally as classic to me on the nostalgia score After reading a little bit on Wiki about the album, I feel they best summarized it as the in between of Grunge and Melodic pop punk, which would later make huge waves throughout the 2000s Yuka and I still sing Basket Case at karaoke sometimes too lol. The influence is global Notable tracks: Longview, Welcome to Paradise, Basket Case

Quintessential pop punk

How do you rate an album that's already in your rotation?

My boyfriend is basically in green day, five stars!

Hit after hit c'mon

Is this the best Green Day album? No Is it still better than most of the other punk albums I’ve listened to so far? Absolutely!

I don't know that I've listened to this all the way through that many times. The radio hits still hold up, while some of the later tracks drag a bit. But it still holds its own as an iconic album.

Recommended reading: "Sellout" by Dan Ozzi.

Name a better coming-of-age album. (Don't, I'm sure there are many great choices. But this is one of them.)

I thought it was good.

Enjoyed this! Punchy and to the point. Which apparently is my sweet spot. Not life changing enough for top marks but a positive experience.

Sigh. I am just not a Green Day guy.

Gran album, con buenos sonidos, funciona como un todo de forma excelente, las canciones van en un combinado que no se nota el cambio de cancion por su increible continuacion entre canciones

Classic that I have been listening to consistently for 30 years. Songs are freaking great, brings back memories of everyone talking about them and Op Ivy around the Bay Area. Are the songs samey sounding? Sure. But that's the earnest naivety that makes this wonderful... It's just fun Pop music that leans Punk.

..

Cool album avec beaucoup d’énergie. Les chansons se ressemblent quand même pas mal, toutes des power chords.

By 1993, the mainstream was still inundated with the sound of what we were calling grunge. And then in 1994, Green Day released Dookie, and it was like a slap to the face. Here was an album that had hooks! It was catchy! It wanted to please! And it did the one thing that the grunge-era bands weren't doing: it brought humor to the angst. It's punk rock influenced by the Ramones, not the Sex Pistols. These are three guys who sound just as bored, lost, and uncertain about what the future holds as every one of their fans felt. It's guys whose anger is neutered by their own hilarious incompetence. It was everything punk rock should be and more. Three snotty punks playing music that spoke to a whole bunch of other snotty punks. They didn't come with solutions on how to handle life; it was more the sound of, 'Hey! We know what you're going through because we're going through it too. So let's at least dance while we do!

Up there with The Beatles in terms of catchy albums. I will die on this hill. This album was my gateway drug into punk rock, which, as D. Boon and Mike Watt would say, changed my life. I learned not long after getting into this in the mid-90s that selling out was bad, that being pop was soft, and all sort of other shit. To that I say: Fuck that! These guys made a transgressive album about alienation, loneliness, masturbation, and strong-willed women and named it after poop and sold 20 million copies! That rules! As I've gotten older, I've realized that pop-punk pops for a reason. It's fun! With the right band, the right lyrics, the right sound, it rules. This is apotheosis of the form, with apologies to Dude Ranch and Milo Goes to College. This album opened up worlds to me. It's far from my favorite punk album, and most of those won't be on this list, but I'll know every word on it until I die or go senile.

Repeat listen

Great classic album, 5

takes me back to 6th grade...probably not a 4 but nostalgia forces me to give it a 4.

There’s something rather peculiar about listening to an album that you can recognise as being extremely good at what it does, while finding yourself largely unmoved by what it achieves. That was my experience of *Dookie*. I enjoyed it, admired the musicianship, laughed at some of the lyrics and found several genuinely appealing songs. But I also spent much of its running time wondering why something so accomplished was leaving so little impression on me. I think part of the answer lies in the distinction between learning a musical language and having something that demands to be expressed in it. Green Day are exceptionally fluent in the language of punk rock. They understand its conventions, its rhythms, its attitudes and its melodic possibilities. More than that, they perform it with extraordinary precision. Yet I seldom get the impression that the music is pushing against its own limitations, or that the musicians are struggling to communicate something that can't be expressed any other way. This is punk as a fully developed musical discipline, performed by people who have mastered it. That isn't necessarily a criticism. There's nothing inherently admirable about incompetence, and no reason why punk musicians shouldn't be accomplished players. But there's a difference between the friction that emerges when musicians are exploring the possibilities of a form and the rather different experience of hearing musicians who know exactly how that form is supposed to work. I've observed before that American musical culture has a particular aptitude for systematising things. There's a tendency to identify the characteristics of a musical genre, establish the techniques required to reproduce them, and then develop those techniques to a remarkably high standard. The resulting music can be superbly executed. It can also lose something of the need, uncertainty and unpredictability that originally made the genre interesting. *Dookie* strikes me as an example of that process. Green Day have absorbed punk's musical vocabulary and refined its delivery to an almost astonishing degree. There's nothing ramshackle about this band whatsoever. The playing is tight, the arrangements disciplined and the production beautifully controlled. They're not the Television Personalities, negotiating their way through songs in which the possibility of everything coming apart seems an essential element of the performance. Green Day sound entirely certain of what they're doing. They are extraordinarily good at it. The most immediately obvious musical ancestor is the Buzzcocks. There's an enormous amount of Pete Shelley in Billie Joe Armstrong's songwriting, particularly in his treatment of adolescent uncertainty, sexual confusion, resentment and the less dignified aspects of romantic relationships. The combination of melodic punk and dark humour is immediately recognisable. But the comparison exposes what became my most persistent irritation with the album. Armstrong is considerably better at introducing songs than he is at resolving them. This became apparent during *Burnout*, when I found myself waiting for a chorus that seemed never quite to arrive. There was a chorus, structurally speaking, but it sounded more like a pre-chorus: a passage intended to increase anticipation before delivering some satisfying melodic release. The same thing happened with *Having a Blast*, and again with *Chump*. The verses established interesting rhythmic or melodic ideas, but the choruses didn't seem to provide an adequate payoff. Initially, I wondered whether this was a deliberate punk gesture. Perhaps Armstrong was consciously avoiding the obvious emotional release of conventional pop songwriting. Yet that explanation became less convincing as the album progressed, because the problem seemed to lie less in the absence of identifiable choruses than in the harmonic movement within them. There is a curious restlessness to his writing. Chord changes continue where I want the harmony to settle. The music keeps generating anticipation at the very moment when it might profitably provide resolution. Even when a chorus arrives at the tonic, Armstrong can seem so anxious to get back to the next riff that he barely allows the arrival to register. By the closing stages I found myself mentally shouting, "For fuck's sake, just end your chorus on the tonic, Billie!" Obviously, there is no rule that choruses must end on the tonic. Some of the most satisfying pop songs derive their character from withholding conventional resolutions. But such decisions need to contribute something to the musical argument. If practically every chorus seems reluctant to settle, the technique begins to lose its expressive value. The Buzzcocks comparison is particularly revealing here. Pete Shelley was a remarkably sophisticated pop songwriter who understood how to make melodic sweetness and emotional discomfort coexist. His choruses could be exhilarating without sacrificing the uncertainty or bitterness of the lyrics. Punk urgency didn't prevent him from providing a satisfying melodic destination. Armstrong has clearly absorbed much of Shelley's vocabulary, but I'm not convinced he's entirely mastered the art of bringing his musical ideas home. There are, however, exceptions that complicate the argument considerably. *Longview* is one of the most satisfying songs on the album, largely because the verse and chorus occupy such different musical environments. The verse is built around a wonderfully loping bass line, with Armstrong almost talking his way through an account of boredom and inertia. When the guitars arrive, the resulting contrast gives the chorus a genuine sense of release. There's something almost Kinks-like about the lyrical treatment of idleness and personal inadequacy. The narrator is faintly ridiculous but entirely recognisable, and the music makes his predicament entertaining without pretending it's particularly admirable. The other revelation is Mike Dirnt's bass playing. His contribution to *Longview* is absolutely superb. The bass isn't simply holding down the rhythm or filling the space beneath the guitars. It's the principal melodic attraction of the verse, with an elasticity and sense of movement that make the song immediately distinctive. I repeatedly found myself admiring Dirnt throughout the album. His playing in the opening sections of *She* is another excellent example. He's inventive without being unnecessarily demonstrative, and his command of the instrument allows him to contribute a considerable amount of musical character while maintaining the band's immaculate rhythmic discipline. Indeed, he may be the most interesting instrumentalist here. There were several occasions when the bass was responsible for sustaining my interest in a song whose melodic development was otherwise fairly predictable. *Basket Case* offers a different complication. This is a song whose harmonic restlessness works in its favour. The lyrics concern anxiety, uncertainty and the inability to settle, and the music's reluctance to provide complete resolution seems thoroughly appropriate. Even the ending leaves a slight sense of something unfinished. Whether this is a carefully calculated compositional decision or a happy accident is impossible to establish from listening, and I don't particularly care. It works. The musical instability complements the emotional instability of the narrator, giving the song a coherence that some of the others lack. That distinction is important. My objection isn't to Armstrong using restless harmonic movement. It's to the frequency with which the movement seems to promise something that the song doesn't subsequently deliver. The other particularly successful piece of songwriting is *Pulling Teeth*, which I found unexpectedly delightful. Strip away the distorted guitars and this is practically a Merseybeat song. The rhythm, melodic construction and general musical character are so convincing that I could almost see Green Day performing it as a wholesome early-sixties beat group, complete with matching suits and synchronised bows. It's about as Merseybeat as you can get without finishing on a sixth chord. The incongruity, of course, is that the song concerns an abusive relationship. Having experienced an abusive domestic relationship myself, I didn't find the treatment offensive, but neither did I find it particularly insightful. The joke is essentially the contrast between an innocent musical form and an unpleasant lyrical situation. It's an effective piece of dark comedy rather than a profound examination of domestic abuse. Indeed, having recently undergone a tooth extraction, I can confidently report that the dentistry was considerably less painful than the relationship. I found myself imagining a video in the style of OutKast's *Hey Ya!*, recreating an early-sixties television performance with screaming audiences and immaculate presentation. The key would be for nobody on screen to acknowledge the appalling lyrical content. The boys would simply finish the song, smile and bow. That comparison also reminds me how successfully popular music can use apparent innocence to accommodate rather darker subject matter. Armstrong's songwriting is often at its most effective when he allows that contradiction to do the work. The lyrics are, in fact, a consistent strength of *Dookie*. Armstrong has a good line in mordant humour, and his subjects are recognisably human: boredom, alienation, frustration, sexual uncertainty, resentment, disappointing relationships and the various indignities of being young. *Sassafras Roots* is particularly funny. Its central proposition that two people might as well waste their time together is an unexpectedly affectionate sentiment masquerading as cynicism. I rather liked that. There's something disarmingly unromantic about suggesting that a relationship might simply be an opportunity for the mutual squandering of time. *Welcome to Paradise* also has an appealingly cynical attitude towards independence. It's about leaving home and discovering that the supposedly liberated adult existence involves rather less glamour than anticipated. It reminded me of my sister, who postponed buying a washing machine for as long as possible, apparently regarding the parental laundry facilities as an inalienable right. Moving out and actually leaving home are not necessarily the same thing. The humour throughout the album is often better than the emotional development of the songs. Armstrong is particularly good at establishing situations and introducing characters, but he doesn't always take those ideas anywhere especially interesting. *Coming Clean* illustrates this. Its opening description of being seventeen and confused immediately recalls Pete Shelley, not least because the song addresses emerging sexual identity. But having introduced that potentially significant subject, Armstrong doesn't develop it particularly far. I was left with a slight sense of "And?" To be fair, an expression of confusion doesn't necessarily need to culminate in a revelation. The absence of certainty may be the point. But the song establishes an interesting premise without giving me much more to consider, and it's gone in a minute and a half. That became a characteristic experience. The songs are frequently engaging while they're playing, but relatively little lingers afterwards. There's more variety in the music than the band's reputation might suggest. *When I Come Around* has a chunky, mid-tempo guitar riff that seems to belong closer to conventional hard rock than punk, with a rhythmic pattern that nagged at my memory throughout the song. I was convinced I'd heard something remarkably similar elsewhere, although I couldn't identify it. *Chump* has an extended instrumental section that sounds almost like something designed for live performance, allowing the singer a break while the band maintains the momentum. Its transition directly into *Longview* is an interesting piece of album construction. Rather than simply presenting a succession of short, self-contained punk songs, Green Day use the segue to change the rhythmic environment without losing continuity. *Emenius Sleepus* offers something closer to the conventional distinction between verse, chorus and middle eight that I'd been looking for. *In the End* comes nearer to providing the harmonic resolution I wanted, although it remains in such a hurry to return to its bridging riff that the effect is almost immediately dissipated. And the acoustic opening of *F.O.D.* provides particularly good evidence of Armstrong's technical competence. Acoustic guitar is an unforgiving instrument compared with heavily overdriven electric guitar. It exposes uneven attack, poor timing and imprecise chord changes. Armstrong's playing is beautifully controlled. It's worth emphasising that none of my complaints about the songwriting should be mistaken for complaints about the musicianship. The performances are excellent. Green Day have no difficulty executing their musical ideas. My reservations concern the ideas themselves, particularly their development and resolution. By about halfway through the record, I'd become accustomed to the peculiarities of Armstrong's choruses. They were no longer irritating me quite so much, and I found myself enjoying the songs on their own terms. Yet there remained a curious lightness to the experience. The lyrics are sometimes dark, occasionally unpleasant and frequently funny, but the music's breezy efficiency tends to cushion their impact. Even the nastier observations are delivered so energetically and competently that they seem to bounce off rather than penetrate. This was where I began to understand my distance from the album. In 1994, when *Dookie* was released, I was thirty. I had already lived through punk and post-punk, absorbed the Buzzcocks and the subsequent expansion of British popular music, and developed interests that extended considerably beyond straightforward guitar rock. Around the same time, I was listening to Blur's *Parklife*. That's an instructive comparison, not because *Parklife* is necessarily a more important album, but because it represents a very different approach to using inherited musical languages. Blur were moving between music hall, punk, disco, character sketches, melancholy balladry and numerous other influences, allowing different traditions to collide and create unexpected results. Green Day were concentrating on becoming exceptionally accomplished within a much more narrowly defined musical vocabulary. I can appreciate the achievement without finding it particularly exciting. Indeed, I suspect that if I'd been born in 1980, during Jimmy Carter's final year in office, I might have regarded *Dookie* as an absolutely marvellous album. At fourteen in 1994, its mixture of speed, melodic accessibility, irreverence and adolescent dissatisfaction could have been thrilling. But at thirty, I was already well acquainted with its musical ancestry. I wasn't discovering a new language; I was recognising one I'd learned years earlier. That doesn't mean Green Day were making juvenile music. It means they were addressing an audience at a different point in its musical development from mine. And they knew their audience remarkably well. This is an album that should probably have come with a complimentary pair of Vans and a sticker for the skateboard. I don't say that dismissively. There's considerable merit in making music that communicates directly with its intended audience, and Green Day were doing so with confidence, humour and technical accomplishment. But I think the distinction between an excellent demonstration of a musical form and a genuinely compelling artistic statement remains important. The former can be admired without necessarily provoking the emotional response associated with the latter. The album's hidden conclusion, *All by Myself*, provided one final unexpected pleasure. After nearly forty minutes of disciplined, polished punk, Tré Cool appears with an acoustic guitar and a vocal performance that sounds remarkably like being serenaded by Elmer Fudd. It's gloriously ridiculous. I laughed rather more than I had at anything else on the record. There's a deliberate daftness to it, an eccentric little personality emerging from the otherwise tightly controlled musical machinery. It doesn't transform the album or invalidate anything that preceded it, but it's a delightful way to finish. Perhaps the record could have used a little more Elmer Fudd. My eventual response to *Dookie* is considerably more affectionate than some of these criticisms might suggest. It's a very good album, frequently entertaining, often funny and performed by musicians of considerable ability. Mike Dirnt's bass playing alone provides several moments worth revisiting. Armstrong has an excellent instinct for opening lines, engaging verses and sardonic observations, even if his choruses don't always bring his ideas to satisfactory conclusions. I also hear a songwriter who has considerable room to develop. Having already encountered *American Idiot* in this project, I know that Armstrong will eventually demonstrate a much greater command of large-scale musical structure and emphatic melodic resolution. *Dookie* contains plenty of evidence of the talent that will make that possible, even if the results aren't yet entirely convincing to me. And the album's relentless efficiency is, after all, part of what makes it enjoyable. It doesn't outstay its welcome, doesn't indulge in unnecessary instrumental display, and seldom allows its energy to flag. I just don't find myself needing very much of what it offers. That may be as much a consequence of my musical history as of the record itself. There's no reason an album should have to astonish someone who has already spent decades listening to the traditions from which it emerged. Ultimately, I hear *Dookie* as an extremely accomplished, rather brattish pop-punk record whose pleasures are immediate and whose limitations are equally apparent. It has wit, energy, musicianship and a strong sense of identity. It also has a habit of promising more musical resolution than it delivers, and its remarkable polish occasionally deprives it of the friction I find most compelling. None of that makes it a disappointment. I enjoyed it perfectly well, laughed several times and discovered rather more musical sophistication than I'd expected from a band I've never particularly loved. But I doubt I'll return to it very often. Put it on, enjoy the racket, don't think too hard about it, and let the kids have their fun.

Always a great listen. Great beginning to where they are now.

Loved this in my teens and still have a lot of affection for it. It's around 3.5 stars for me I think- there are some fairly forgettable tracks in alongside the fun, catchy ones I remember so fondly.

Every single song is great. I’ve probably listened to this album over 1000 times.

Listened October 2024. No other album I love feels as up and down. Four classic songs, but a few mediocrities. Probably why I’ve never quite embraced it like most classics.

Ett bra exempel på ett album som jag, har en gigantiskt hit men där resten också lever upp till hypen.

It's 3.5

It's fine I guess. Nowhere near the level of American Idiot, which would end up being their peak before the quality really starts to drop. There are a few good tracks, but the rest just feels kinda like generic pop-punk. The amount of times I've heard this in people's cars is worrying. Still, it's better than whatever slop Green Day have been churning out recently.

High school musical

Nostalgically enjoyable.

Oh yeah, love it. Is it great? No. Is it fucking awesome? Fuck yeah!!

One of the best albums of the 90s, it’s damn near perfect

This brings back some memories. Some good. Some bad. At the end of the day, this is 3 stars for me, but that's not entirely fair - it's a good album, with some genuinely excellent songs. But my watermark for 4 stars is "I'll choose to put this on again" and that's just not the case here. So this is a high 3.

fine but again not for me

The beginning of "Longview" always grabs me. These songs sounded so good coming out of a car stereo in the 90s.

Okay, here's what you do. Take some Monkees-pop hooks, but shove them over into inoffensive punk guitars and drums. Take the lyrics and make them inoffensive but gesturing towards transgressive. Hose it down with that snotty but inoffensive mid-90s "I'm a loser adolescent boy" attitude. There we have it: I am inoffended!

Pretty much made pop punk a thing and did it better than most of the bands that followed in their wake. Snappy, tense, very Gen X, this is a classic.

3.5/5

Meh, it has its moments.

i find billie joe armstrong's voice just a liiitle grating. i can handle and even enjoy individual green day tunes but a full album is a bit too much for me. american idiot got an extra point for nostalgia reasons

I've never been the hugest fan of Green Day because his whiny emo voice just bothers me. This is actually my first time listening to this full album, his voice still bugs me but I'm also enjoying it. I just looked up emo voice and apparently it started with Descendents as a copy of the british sneer from bands like the Sex Pistols, another band I don't like. So basically invented by the SoCal punk scene - That tracks. Weirdly I love a lot of the early bands that did the emo voice mostly because it felt very sarcastic whereas with Green Day it feels a bit more earnest to me. I think knowing the background of the emo voice makes it less annoying to me. This album has some really great songs on it and it would be 5 stars if not for his voice. Either way I enjoyed Green Day much more this time than last time I heard them.

Solid rock album.

Perfect pop punk album

I did not expect to like it like I did

Bit of a struggle to decide if a 3 or a 4 strong songs tight melodic power pop I think the lack of pace change gives it a 3.

Definitely an album that has grown on me over the years. If you like one song you probably like the whole album because they all sound the same.

The riffs, the rage, the remedial class clowning.

Bien.

Pretty fun, but too long and started to sound the same after a while. The hits were great and the rest was solid. Probably deserves its place on the list even though I liked but didn't love the album