(That awkward moment when you realise your bedroom walls
haven’t changed since around 2005...)
Yesterday I decided to revisit some of the old Green Day
albums I’d once inherited from my older brother (who’d once had a pop-punk phase similar to my own before crossing over to the dark side, i.e. death metal) including 1994’s
‘Dookie’, their first major-label album.
Overall ‘Dookie’ stood out by a mile as a record from
the nineties that, despite having inevitably dated, is still probably the most
listenable of their entire back-catalogue. It marks the time just before
frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s lyrics were peppered with his trademark snark
and heavily political subject matter –instead, ‘Dookie’ is full of simply, sometimes
painfully, honest accounts of life as an early-twentysomething.
"All her doubts were someone else's point of view"
The restrained opening bass line of ‘She’ is a something of
a pace-changer, stripping things back a bit after the pogo-fest that is ‘Basket
Case’. The lyrics in the verses are given room to make a real impact on the listener in a way
that stands out from the rest of the record –a technique that my later
favourite bands like Alkaline Trio and Hot Water Music would repeatedly take
advantage of a few years down the line.
‘She’ is at its heart a song about control, a theme that
many young women will know only too well whether through a lack of freedom,
pressure to fit in or the endless demands and constraints of gender
expectations: “Are you feeling like a social tool without a use?” Instead of
trying to offer some kind of cover-all solution or judgement, all Armstrong can offer to
do is listen, “until [his] ears bleed”. Nice. Still, the sentiment is appreciated.
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