Fan poll: 5 greatest Green Day songs of all time

The trajectory of Green Day has been fraught with inevitable growing pains. Against the landscape of Oakland in the 1990’s, the group created a soundtrack that echoed the emotional whiplash of their adolescence to early adulthood, which was peppered with incredible loss, drug use, and relentless, unabashed ambition. Through it all, with each project the trio composed of Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool put out, the group, and their fanbase, grew and grew up. Over the years, Green Day has worked diligently to achieve an impressive balance between their trademark alternative angst and authenticity. Today, Green Day’s world view has grown wider — onstage banter that once focused on toilet jokes now touches on politics ranging from Roe V. Wade to advocating for the queer community. But at any point in their discography, from the studio to the stage, their community-building spirit and tongue-in-cheek, punk attitude has been present. It shines through in their consistent eagerness in bringing fans onstage to play with the band, and the reactionary, raw songs that have never held a thought, opinion, or emotion back. 

Read more: 10 criminally underrated blink-182 songs

With iconic albums to work with, from 1994’s Dookie to American Idiot a decade later, we asked the fans what the best Green Day songs of all time were, and here are their top five.

5. “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”

Arguably different than Green Day’s “typical” sound, this thoughtful, acoustic track from their fifth album Nimrod has become one of the group’s staple songs, and their most successful commercially. The track is often played as the last song of Green Day’s set, to a crowd going absolutely wild. While the track can be found boxed into categories such as “folk,” and “acoustic rock,” bassist Mike Dirnt proclaimed that putting this song out was truly one of the “most punk” things the band could have done.

4. “Letterbomb”

Featuring vocals from Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill, Letterbomb unveils a chapter in the “punk-rock opera” that was the band’s seventh album, American Idiot. During this time, the group hoped to instigate a conversation about the post-9/11 and Iraq war political climate, as well as express some of their own feelings and opinions on the matter. “Letterbomb” deals with love and loss, a breakup which unearths uneasiness about the warring world as a whole, asking, “where have all the bastards gone?.” It’s a powerful track that encapsulates the themes of the widely acclaimed album, and time, perfectly.

3. “Redundant”

This track stands out sonically for the use of an effects pedal by Armstrong, an easter egg and a rarity in the Green Day discography, which offers a beautifully ironic touch to the track, laying out a narrative inspired by the idea of mundane repetition. Self-reflective and open as ever, Armstrong aired out his marital problems and the redundant patterns he and his wife had fallen into with this song, as further emphasized with the music video. From the POV of a static camera angle, the track and accompanying video are Green Day to a tee: witty, candid, and artfully self-deprecating.

2. “Welcome to Paradise”

First appearing on the band’s second album Kerplunk, only to be re-recorded and re-released three years later on their following studio album, Dookie, “Welcome to Paradise” tells the real Green Day story — one about three kids who moved out of their parents’ houses and into an abandoned warehouse in West Oakland to start a band. Ultimately an anthem about the deeper definition of finding and feeling at “home,” the track is broken into two loose chapters, the sincere lyrics offer insight on Armstrong’s experience, as he moved from the fear of moving out of his mother’s house and into confident independence.

1. “Jesus of Suburbia”

This song has been labeled the “punk rock ‘Bohemian Rhapsody,’” and not only for its length, which clocks in at 9 minutes 18 seconds. The multi-part song is named after, and follows, the American Idiot opera’s main character and anti-hero, Jesus, who detests the lower-middle-class American town he lives in, where he has been raised on “soda pop and Ritalin,” and in retaliation, leaves for “The City.” Weaving in elements of The Beatles’ Revolution and David Bowie guitar parts, the song’s big aspirations didn’t fall short. 

Source: altpress.com