

“I just knew that when we released it, people were going to respond and explode. “I just had a feeling about American Idiot,” producer Rob Cavallo later told Kerrang!. Jimmy and Letterbomb, and heart-wrenching emotion of Wake Me Up When September Ends and Whatsername.

It resulted in songs like the epic Jesus Of Suburbia and Homecoming, fired-up punk rock classics like Holiday, St. Far from giving up, though, the trio came back swinging – not just wanting to overcome their circumstances, but even go as far as to out-do each other as they went. Mike later admitted on live DVD Bullet In A Bible that Billie Joe had phoned him to ask, “Do you even want to do this anymore?” following the mixed reaction to Warning and the toll of that particular cycle, before the master tapes to their then-new album Cigarettes And Valentines were mysteriously “stolen”. Really, what more can be said about Green Day’s monumental seventh album? Yes, the songs are genuinely incredible, but the context in which the full-length was made also makes it all the more jaw-dropping. Here, then, we tackle the band’s discography from not-so-classic to certified masterpiece… And as easy as it would be to write a ‘Green Day albums ranked from best to best to best to best’ list, that’s not quite how the internet works.

Thankfully, the frontman has, across three decades, consistently gone on to turn this aforementioned “mess” into quite the opposite, with Green Day’s inimitable 13-album discography garnering the band millions of dedicated fans, a couple of hundred award nominations, and a legacy that most rock bands could only dream of.Īnd they’re still at it, too: the 4K-rated Father Of All… not only proved that Billie Joe, bassist Mike Dirnt and drummer Tré Cool are as strong a force as ever, but also that they’re eager to plunge headfirst into fresh and exciting new waters. “With Green Day, the first thing that comes to mind with making a record is making a mess first,” Billie Joe Armstrong told Kerrang! back in 2018, detailing the Oakland heroes’ mindset going into each and every studio album (of which there’s been plenty).
