February 1st, 2014 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Green Day‘s first major label album, Dookie. It is considered by some the most influential punk album in history, mainly for launching punk into the mainstream music scene, setting the stage for today’s pop punk bands that kids, myself included, go crazy for. The Ramones and the Sex Pistols may be the seen as the pioneers of punk rock in the 1970’s, but their listeners are mostly kids from within the punk scene. Green Day, through Dookie, paved way for punk music – punk rock, pop punk, hardcore punk and every form of whiny, angsty music – to penetrate into the ears to people who don’t even know what the punk scene is. Proof of Dookie’s success is its 5x DiamondRIAA certification in the US (10 million copies sold) and 3x Platinum in the UK (900, 000 copies sold).
Personally, Dookie is my favorite album ever for three reasons: the songs are fast, simple and catchy; most of the themes (teenage anst, anxiety attacks, jealousy and dislike for some people among others) are easily relatable; and it’s an album by my favorite band. My favorite tracks are Basket Case, When I Come Around, She, Sassafras Roots and Longview (mainly because of the killer bassline).
(Related: Some of today’s pop punk bands talk about how Dookie influenced them to form bands of their own. Link here)
How about you take 40 minutes of your Saturday night to listen to entire album? I’ve taken the liberty of posting every track here (from Youtube):
1. Burnout
3. Chump
4. Longview (official music video here)
7. Basket Case (official music video here)
8. She
10. When I Come Around (official music video here)
11. Coming Clean
12. Emenius Sleepus
13. In The End
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