1. Burnout

2. Having A Blast

3. Chump

4. Longview

5. Welcome To Paradise

6. Pulling Teeth

7. Basket Case

8. She

9. Sassafras Roots

10. When I Come Around

11. Coming Clean

12. Emenius Sleepus

13. In The End

14. F.O.D.

Rolling Stone

Purists of the abyss, malcontent Sid Vicious nostalgics bitch that Green Day aren't orthodox punks. All right, just label the Berkeley , Calif. , trio brilliant punkoids and be done with it. But it's useful to remember that before mythic Brits such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash spewed distorted guitar and anarchic politics, punk essentially was the Ramones – that is, basically just the Beach Boys ultraloud and pissed off.

Employing the Jam and the Damned on Dookie in the same way the Rolling Stones emulated Elmore James, Billie Joe, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool of Green Day render the spirit of (19)76 in crunchy pop-guitar hooks, trebly bass and madcap tempos. They're convincing mainly because they've got punk's snotty anti-values down cold: blame, self-pity, arrogant self-hatred, humor, narcissism, fun.

On rave-ups like "Basket Case," "Welcome to Paradise," "Having a Blast" and "Longview," Green Day's lyrics score graffiti hits: "I don't know you, but I think I hate you"; "She screams in silence"; "No time for motivation/Smoking my inspiration." And if for targets they substitute demonized moms and mall ennui for the jackboot brutality of the State, they render teenage wasteland politics with all the more accurate deadpan wit.

All Music

Green Day couldn't have had a blockbuster without Nirvana, but Dookie wound up being nearly as revolutionary as Nevermind, sending a wave of imitators up the charts and setting the tone for the mainstream rock of the mid-'90s. Like Nevermind, this was accidental success, the sound of a promising underground group suddenly hitting its stride just as they got their first professional, big-budget, big-label production. Really, that's where the similarities end, since if Nirvana were indebted to the weirdness of indie rock, Green Day were straight-ahead punk revivalists through and through. They were products of the underground pop scene kept alive by such protagonists as All, yet what they really loved was the original punk, particularly such British punkers as the Jam and Buzzcocks. On their first couple records, they showed promise, but with Dookie, they delivered a record that found Billie Joe Armstrong bursting into full flower as a songwriter, spitting out melodic ravers that could have comfortable sat alongside Singles Going Steady, but infused with an ironic self-loathing popularized by Nirvana, whose clean sound on Nevermind is also emulated here. Where Nirvana had weight, Green Day are deliberately adolescent here, treating nearly everything as joke and having as much fun as snotty punkers should. They demonstrate a bit of depth with "When I Come Around," but that just varies the pace slightly, since the key to this is their flippant, infectious attitude — something they maintain throughout the record, making Dookie a stellar piece of modern punk that many tried to emulate but nobody bettered.