Dookie
Dookie is the third studio album and major-label debut by the American rock band Green Day, released on February 1, 1994, by Reprise Records. The band's first collaboration with producer Rob Cavallo, it was recorded in 1993 at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley, California. Written mostly by the singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, the album is largely based on his personal experiences and includes themes such as boredom, anxiety, relationships, and sexuality. It was promoted with four singles: "Longview", "Basket Case", a re-recorded version of "Welcome to Paradise", and "When I Come Around".
After several years of grunge's dominance in popular music, Dookie brought a livelier, more melodic rock sound to the mainstream and propelled Green Day to worldwide fame. Considered one of the defining albums of the 1990s and of punk rock in general, it was also pivotal in solidifying the genre's mainstream popularity. Its influence continued into the new millennium and beyond, being cited as an inspiration by many punk rock and pop-punk bands, as well as artists from other genres.
Dookie received critical acclaim upon its release, although some early fans accused the band of being sellouts for leaving its independent label and embracing a more polished sound. The record won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album at the 37th Annual Grammy Awards in 1995. It was a worldwide success, peaking at number two on the Billboard 200 in the United States and reaching top ten positions in several other countries.
Dookie was later certified double diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America. It has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, making it the band's best-selling album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. It has been labeled by critics and journalists as one of the greatest albums of the 1990s and one of the greatest punk rock and pop-punk albums of all time. Rolling Stone placed Dookie on all four iterations of its "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, and at number 1 on its "The 50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums" list in 2017. In 2024, the album was selected for preservation in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Background
With the success in the independent world of the band's first two albums, 39/Smooth and Kerplunk, which sold 30,000 units each, a number of major record labels became interested in Green Day. Among them were Sony, Warner Bros., Geffen and Interscope. Representatives of these labels attempted to entice the band to sign by inviting them for meals to discuss a deal, with one manager even inviting the group to Disneyland. The band declined these advances; Armstrong believed that the labels were more than likely looking for something that resembled a grunge band, namely "second- and third-rate Nirvanas and Soundgardens", and they did not want to conform to a label's vision. That changed when they met the producer and A&R representative Rob Cavallo of Reprise, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. The band played Beatles covers for him for 40 minutes, then Cavallo picked up his own guitar and jammed with them. They were impressed by his work with fellow Californian band the Muffs, and later remarked that Cavallo "was the only person we could really talk to and connect with".Eventually, the band left their independent record label, Lookout! Records, on friendly terms. They signed a five-album deal with Reprise in April 1993. The deal secured Cavallo as the producer of the first record and allowed the band to retain the rights to its albums on Lookout!. Signing to a major label caused many of Green Day's original fans to label them sell-outs, including the influential punk fanzine Maximumrocknroll and the independent music club 924 Gilman Street. After Green Day's September 3 gig at 924 Gilman Street, the venue banned the group from entering or playing. They would not return to the venue until 2015, when they played a benefit concert there. Reflecting on this period in 1999, Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told Spin magazine:: "I couldn't go back to the punk scene, whether we were the biggest success in the world or the biggest failure The only thing I could do was get on my bike and go forward."
Much of Dookies content was written by Armstrong, except "Emenius Sleepus", which was written by the bassist Mike Dirnt, and the hidden track, "All by Myself", which was written by Tré Cool.
Recording and production
Following the band's last Gilman Street performance, Green Day demoed the songs "She", "Sassafras Roots", "Pulling Teeth" and "F.O.D." on Armstrong's four-track tape recorder and sent it to Cavallo. After listening to it, Cavallo sensed that " had stumbled on something big." However, he recognized that the band members were struggling to play their best; he reasoned that they were anxious because the most time they had previously spent recording an album was three days while recording Kerplunk. To lighten the mood, he invited them to a Mexican restaurant and bar down the street from Fantasy Studios, even though the drummer Tré Cool was not of legal drinking age at the time. Armstrong confirmed the band's anxiety in an interview years later, describing the group feeling "like little kids in a candy store" and fearing that the band would lose money on work being scrapped by the label for not meeting standards. Despite this, they focused on making the most of the new production resources at their disposal; unlike their previous albums where the band had to rush to complete them to save money, the band took their time to perfect the quality of their output. Armstrong noted that he learned "how to dial in good sounds, get the best guitar tones. I was able to take a little time doing vocals." With a larger budget, Armstrong began exploring different amplifiers in search of a thicker guitar tone. He eventually selected a 100-watt Marshall Plexi 1959SLP amplifier to use on the album, which he nicknamed "Pete". According to Armstrong, "We were just trying to go from loud to louder."Recording took place over the course of three weeks at Fantasy, and the album was mixed twice by Cavallo and the producer Jerry Finn. Though the band took their time to make a quality product as a whole, Armstrong's vocals were still recorded very quickly; he recorded about 16 or 17 songs in two days, most of them in a single take. Armstrong said the band at first "wanted it to sound really dry, the same way the Sex Pistols record or the early Black Sabbath records sounded", but the band found the result of this approach to be an unsatisfactory original mix. Cavallo agreed, and it was remixed at Devonshire Sound Studios in North Hollywood, Los Angeles. During the remixing process, the band took to Music Grinder Studio in Los Angeles to re-record the tracks "Chump" and "Longview" as the original recordings had been "plagued by an inordinate amount of tape hiss". Armstrong later said of their studio experience, "Everything was already written, all we had to do was play it." Among the material recorded but not included on the album was "Good Riddance ", which would later be re-recorded for the band's 1997 album Nimrod and become a hit in its own right. The band also recorded new versions of the songs "Welcome to Paradise", "2000 Light Years Away" and "Christie Rd." from their second album Kerplunk and "409 in Your Coffeemaker" from their second EP, Slappy, though only "Welcome to Paradise" would make it onto the final album.
Music and lyrics
Stylistically, the album has been categorized primarily as punk rock, but also as pop-punk and as a "power pop take" on skate punk. NME characterized the album's sound by "crashing drums, razor-wire guitars, a double helping of fuck you attitude", and Arielle Gordon of Pitchfork stated that the album "made apathy sound apoplectic". Influences from the Ramones and the Sex Pistols were noted in Armstrong's guitar technique throughout the album; he recorded the album almost entirely with his Fernandes Stratocaster, which he named "Blue", and incorporated frequent major chords and palm muting. Armstrong achieved the album's loud, crunchy guitar sound with a 100-watt Marshall Plexi 1959SLP amplifier. Many of the album's tracks have brief runtimes; Fred Thomas of AllMusic noted, "the way the tracks fly by nervously in barrages of buzzing guitars and half-sung, half-sneered vocals from Billie Joe Armstrong intentionally aims to obscure how precise their arrangements are." Jason Chow of the National Post characterized the tracks themselves as "furious but sweet melodies". Additionally, bassist Mike Dirnt incorporated vocal harmonies that have drawn comparisons to Brill Building music.Lyrically, the album is characterized by its "irreverent attitude", and touched upon various experiences of the band members and included subjects such as anxiety and panic attacks, masturbation, sexual orientation, boredom, self-deprecation, mass murder, divorce, domestic abuse, and ex-girlfriends. PopMatters summarized the album's theme as "a record that speaks of the frustrations, anxieties, and apathy of young people". Gordon assessed that the album "reached for humor to communicate helplessness", and joked: "For the downtrodden and the downwardly mobile, masturbating until you lose your mind can feel like rebellion, too."
Songs 1–7
Dookie opens with "Burnout", a "speedy, antsy rocker" centered around a central character's feelings of general apathy toward life. The track has been described as a "disarmingly cheerful descent into total numbness". Armstrong wrote the song "Having a Blast" when he was in Cleveland in June 1992. The song revolves around a mentally ill character who plans to use explosives to kill himself and others. This was not regarded as a serious issue at the time, as the social climate could allow the song to be viewed as "mere cathartic fantasy", but later incidents such as the 1999 Columbine High School massacre have made the song the "most uncomfortable track" on the album. On "Chump", Armstrong takes the perspective of someone who shows prejudice, insulting another person without actually knowing them. At the end of the song, it is revealed that the disliked person in question matches Armstrong's description of himself. "Chump" is also the first of three songs that allude to Amanda, a former girlfriend of Armstrong's. The album's first single, "Longview", had a signature bass line that Dirnt wrote while under the influence of LSD. In an interview with Guitar World in 2002, Armstrong described the character in the song as based on himself when he lived in Rodeo, California: "There was nothing to do there, and it was a real boring place." To entertain himself, the character does nothing but watch television, smoke marijuana, and masturbate, and has little motivation to change these habits despite tiring of the same cycle of behaviors."Welcome to Paradise", the third single from Dookie, originally appeared on the band's second studio album, Kerplunk!. Described as a "bleakly sardonic portrait of urban decay". the song was written about Armstrong's experiences living in bad neighborhoods around Oakland, California. "Pulling Teeth", one of the album's slower songs, uses dark humor about domestic violence. The typical victim and perpetrator are reversed; the male narrator is at the mercy of his female partner. The band's inspiration for this song came from a pillow fight between Dirnt and his girlfriend that ended with the bassist breaking his elbow. The second single, "Basket Case", which appeared on many singles charts worldwide, was also inspired by Armstrong's personal experiences. The song deals with Armstrong's panic attacks and feelings of "going crazy" before being diagnosed with a panic disorder. Using palm muting, Armstrong is the only one who plays on the song until halfway through the song's first chorus, with the other instruments' arrival representing panic setting in. In the second verse, "Basket Case" mentions soliciting a male prostitute; Armstrong said, "I wanted to challenge myself and whoever the listener might be. It's also looking at the world and saying, 'It's not as black and white as you think. This isn't your grandfather's prostitute – or maybe it was.'" The music video was filmed in an abandoned mental institution. It is one of the band's most popular songs.