The Green Day line-up was different on this record – Tre Cool hadn’t yet joined, so drums where provided by John Keftimeyer, who is not as naturally gifted as Tre, but is a capable drummer. John left after this album to go to college, and missed out on Green Day going huge.
AT THE LIBRARY
This gets the album of to a great start, a simple riff with a great bassline. It’s a song about unrequited love, seeing someone you like, but not having the courage to go up and talk to them, wishing they would go away so you could ask them at a better time, and then when you’re ready, it’s too late.
DON’T LEAVE ME
Another simple riff, with a more pronounced bassline on this track. It’s a short song about how far he’ll go to hang on to his girlfriend. Mike’s backing vocals really drive this song along well.
I WAS THERE
Is the first really outstanding song on the album, with a great drumbeat and another great bass, the guitar is slightly quieter, all moving along pretty briskly. This is about looking into the past and remembering old times and trying to live them out again, but at the same time trying to look to the future. It’s quite upbeat and lifting, one of the best songs on the album.
DISAPPEARING BOY
This one has a great little riff; it’s another fast one, with more great vocal harmonies from Mike in the background. The lyrics are slightly more obtuse in this song, they’re clumsy in places but the tune saves the song. Billie puts himself in the place of a boy who can disappear when things start to go wrong, instead of just running away.
GREEN DAY
This self-titled track relies heavily on the bass-line and drums; it’s more lumbering and dreamy than the previous songs on the album. The lyrics are descriptions of weird things they have seen while smoking more than just cigarettes.
GOING TO PASALACQUA
This song picks the pace right up again; it’s another loud song that’s driven mainly by the lead guitar. It’s a song about the beginnings of infatuation with someone, which comes on just when it’s not expected, and the sleepless nights that it brings. Billie sums up his pessimistic view on life saying “Would it last forever”, showing he has no confidence in whatever he does going right.
16
This song has a great riff, and a really funky bass line that makes you want to dance. The lyrics are typical of being 16, wanting it to last forever, and slipping back into memories you wish you could live over and over, while wondering what the future holds for you and where exactly you fit in.
ROAD TO ACCEPTANCE
This is one of the fastest songs on the album, and if you’re not jumping around by now, you will be. This song has great pace and vigour, driven by lyrics about growing up and trying to get people to accept you. It’s obviously a song about love to, as Billie talks about changing the way he is in order to win her affections.
REST
This is a really slow, dreamy song, perfect for nighttime listening before you go to sleep. It’s a sad love song about trying to win someone’s heart, and it’s almost as if the song is told in a dream, he talks about the angel dancing away, when he thought things had changed. It sums up how just when you think things are about to get better, things invariably get worse again.
THE JUDGE’S DAUGHTER
The slow pace doesn’t last for long, and the album explodes back into life with this up-tempo rocky number. It’s a song about realising you love someone else when you’re going without with somebody, and trying to figure out if it’s worth changing everything to take a new chance at love.
PAPER LANTERNS
This song is my favourite on the album; it has great lyrics, a great bassline, and an even better riff, which goes up and down the fret board. It’s a song about loving someone that will never love you back, how you know you will never be more than friends, but you just can’t get them off your mind. He just wants these feelings to end, but every time he thinks he’s over it, it pops back up again.
WHY DO YOU WANT HIM
A really fast riff opens this song, and the pace continues the whole way through the song, which compensates somewhat for the simple lyrics in the song. It’s a pretty standard song about wondering why this girl stays with this guy who just makes her cry and hurts her all the time. Billie wrote this song about his mother when she was going through trouble with her new boyfriend after Billie’s father died.
409 IN YOUR COFFEEMAKER
The oddest title on the album is one of the best songs on the album as well. It’s another simple riff, and is the first song in a while to make real use of Mike’s backing vocals. It’s another reflective song, about looking back at what is in the past and wondering where he went wrong and what he could have done to change things for the better.
KNOWLEDGE
This is a cover of the old Operation Ivy song, and its really cool. It opens with mainly Billie’s vocals, and is mainly just a piano, the bass and vocals, until there is a guitar solo in the middle. It’s more ska than punk, and it’s clearly just them doing one of their favourite songs for a bit of a laugh. The live versions they play now of this song are brilliant, where they get someone out of the audience to play guitar on it.
1, 000 HOURS
This song resumes normal pace, with a really simple but really fast riff, and an equally simple bassline. It’s another love song, again it’s imagining what could be, wondering what they’ll do when they finally get together, and Billie trying to convey how much he loves her and how sincere his feeling are.
DRY ICE
This is another of my favourite songs, it’s got a fantastic tune, it’s fast, Mike excels on backing vocals and it has really powerful https://lyrics. It’s a really sad song, about dreaming of the girl he loves, only to wake up and find that she’s not there, and the deflated feeling that brings. He is desperately trying to tell her how he feels, but he just can’t get it out. This is the type of song Green Day do best.
ONLY OF YOU
Going back to a really simple riff, this is another love song about trying to tell the person he loves how he feels. It’s pretty effective, only having the drums and bass come in on the chorus, and it shows just how good Billie’s voice is. They make good use of harmonies in the chorus, it’s pretty standard Green Day, but enjoyable while it lasts,
THE ONE I WANT
This song is slower and more simple, but still as effective as what’s gone before. It’s yet another song about trying to tell someone how he feels and imagining what will happen when he finally does.
I WANT TO BE ALONE
A really spiky, aggressive, shouty song to end the album on. It ends the album really well he’s basically just emphasizing that he doesn’t want anyone’s help, what’s going on inside his head is his business and he just wants to be alone.
It’s an album for the Green Day completist; it probably would be appreciated as much without listening to their other albums first, but to any Green Day fan that hasn’t already got it, I strongly recommend it.