Green Day’s ’90s run was practically untouchable. They launched the decade with back-to-back albums — 39/Smooth and Kerplunk! — both issued by Lookout! Records. However, as the band started to make their name through rowdy punk shows in the Bay Area, the indie label couldn’t keep up with demand for their music, leading them to go with a major for 1994’s Dookie. That move and LP changed the trajectory of their careers, seen as an affront to their roots and, in turn, got them cast as “sellouts,” including being banned from 924 Gilman Street. In the process, they earned a whole new flock of fans who appreciated their gleeful rage cloaked in poppy blasts, even as they messed with their sound on 1995’s Insomniac and 1997’s Nimrod.
Read more: 10 most criminally underrated Green Day songs
Having kicked off Super Bowl LX this past weekend, we asked our readers about the best Green Day songs from the ’90s. They fired back with favorites from Dookie and beyond. Find the top fan picks ranked below.
5. “Longview”
As the first preview of 1994’s Dookie, “Longview” tells the story of a jaded stoner whom Billie Joe Armstrong based on himself while living in Rodeo, California, about 20 minutes from Oakland. “It was just living in the suburbs in a sort of shit town where you can’t even pull in a good radio station… There was nothing to do there, and it was a real boring place,” he told Guitar World in 2002. With that isolation in mind, the character cycles through a near-infinite stream of TV, weed, and masturbation to numb himself, but has no motivation to change. Instead, he succumbs to his own misery, dreaming of being taken away to paradise…
4. “Scattered”
Nimrod is the moment Green Day ripped up their own rulebook, taking a giant leap forward by adding horns and strings. “Scattered,” though, represents their ability to offer up smooth melody without losing the drive of their classic punk. The song was written from the POV of someone who gets emotional after seeing old photos spread out on a bedroom floor, reflecting on love and loss. The band played the song most during their Nimrod tour across 1997 and 1998, though they added it to their setlists frequently in 2017, for its 20th anniversary. For a true time capsule of the era, though, head below to hear it live at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia in 1997, issued on Nimrod’s 25th anniversary deluxe.
3. “Basket Case”
Another Dookie song made the list, and for good reason. With that album, Green Day couched themes of paranoia, alienation, and self-loathing in perfect pop choruses. “‘Basket Case’ is about anxiety attacks and feeling like you’re about to go crazy,” Armstrong said of the song. “At times, I probably was. I’ve suffered from panic disorders my entire life. I thought I was just losing my mind. The only way I could know what the hell was going on was to write a song about it.” Though it eventually became a single, it didn’t get its moment in the sun until the band ripped through the song on Letterman and its mental hospital-inspired video became an MTV regular. When Green Day included it in their mud-slinging performance at Woodstock ’94, it became indestructible.
2. “J.A.R.”
Standing for Jason Andrew Relva, Mike Dirnt wrote “J.A.R.” in the aftermath of a friend’s death in April 1992. Green Day played it live for the first time that same year, turning the eulogy into a pit starter. Though “J.A.R.” never made it to a proper studio album, it was featured on the soundtrack to the 1995 coming-of-age film Angus, released as a single, and later included on the 2001 compilation International Superhits!. Emotionally heavy to play, it’s never been a mainstay in the trio’s setlists, though they did perform it as recently as last month while at The Observatory in Santa Ana.
1. “She”
Unsurprisingly, our readers gravitated toward Dookie the most, and its back-half song “She” grabbed the top spot. At its core, it’s a stripped-down pop song, wrapped around three simple chords in tribute to an old girlfriend from whom Armstrong learned feminism — an education he called “very timely.” “She was telling me about the way women have been objectified for so many years, and I was just listening,” Armstrong told Rolling Stone. “I wrote this as a love song to her, but it was also about learning about her activism… It’s one of those songs that wasn’t a single, but it had a life of its own. Those are the special kinds of songs.” It’s best hammered home by its sticky chorus: “Scream at me until my ears bleed/I’m takin’ heed just for you.”
