Green Day

International Superhits!

Taking Punk into the 90's

Review Score:

(10/10)
"Do you have the time to listen to me whine
About nothing and everything, all at once?"

With that opening salvo from "Basket Case," Green Day perfectly encapsulated what it was like to be a teen in the 90's. Critics may have complained that Billie Jo and company were little more than pale imitations of the Ramones, Buzzcocks or the Damned, but if you were under the age of 16, those bands were something your Aunt and Uncle were into during college might they have been rebellious enough. Besides, every disenfranchised teen needs someone to tell them life sucks, your parents are stifling you and school is just holding you down. With "Dookie," Green Day said it perfectly and to the tune of over 10 million albums sold.

Given that the charts were being dominated by the likes of Mariah Carey and Michael Bolton, having Green Day give society the musical finger ala "Longview" made absolute sense. Green Day became the first "punk" band to have a platinum album, and rightly so. They were loud and fast and fun, while Billie Joe sang with a quirky English affectation, and Tre Cool may be one of the best punk drummer ever. That didn't stop the naysayers from braying "poseurs!," but Green Day had more up their artistic sleeve.

"Insomniac" gave the fans who banged their heads to "Dookie" a lot of what they expected in slams like "Walking Contradiction," which again sported a brilliantly self-effacing lyric in "I'm a smart sas, but I'm playing dumb." At the same time they were obviously plundering Ramones' songs, they also came up with a riff worthy of AC/DC on "Brain Stew." That was the kind of smarts that got them off of the alt-rock radio station ghetto and on to the ones that specailzed in Ozzy. By the next album, "Nimrod," the worldview had obviously made a huge lurch. "We're living in repetition," claims Billie Joe at the beginning of "Repetition," "content in the same old shtick." It's an honest to Pete love song! Almost as far from the "Dookie" mold was the inescapable "Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)," safe enough to work its subversive way onto "Seinfeld."

That acoustic sound blossomed out in full during "Warning," especially the great title track. Even the requisite punky song, "Minority," sounds a little out of sorts with the rest of the CD. It's hard to sound like an overworked teenager when the adult nostalgia of "Macy's Day Parade" belies your age. Not that it matters...every single single of these 21 "Superhits" comes of as individualistic of the "Green Day" sound.

Obviously Green Day were smarter than originally given credit for. "International Superhits," as a history of modern alt-rock and just for plain fun, is every bit as worthy as "Ramonesmania" and "Singles Going Steady." More than any other band of the 90's, Green Day plumbed the spirit and energy of those first 70's bands and pulled into the next generation.

(PS: Just to prove that they could be mature and still kick butt, the 2004 "American Idiot" is Green Day's best CD yet.)

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