One Year, 100 Albums: #34 Green Day "Nimrod"

Green Day Nimrod, 1997

I am sure there's more than one person who clicked on this thinking, "Not Dookie?? What can he possibly be thinking?" And to those people I will say, Dookie is a fantastic album. It changed the face of music in basically the same way Nevermind did 3 years before it.

But Nimrod takes everything that was good on Dookie combines it with everything that was good on Insomniac and then takes that combination and somehow makes it even better.

It's the most eclectic Green Day album by a mile and I think Green Day is better when they mix it up. One of the problems I've had with post-American Idiot Green Day has been that all the songs sound VERY similar. Sure, there are exceptions. And those exceptions are the singles. And that is never a good thing. In my book, your single shouldn't be the best song on the album. It can be ONE of the best, but it should never leave the rest of the album in the dust.

The songs on Nimrod are their own little worlds, but they somehow contribute to the whole in a very positive way. I'm not sure I could listen to just one song from this album even if I tried really really hard.

Green Day is a band of peaks and valleys, I've found. Dookie was a peak. American Idiot was a peak. But Nimrod is the band at their best. It's no wonder their next album, Warning, took such a long time for me to get into. It was a left turn from this fantastic album, and EVENTUALLY an album that I very much enjoy. But it almost feels like an album from a Green Day side project.

It blows my mind to think that "Platypus (I Hate You)" and "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" are on the same album. And that they both WORK. I think we've reached a point where no one hates Green Day for "going acoustic" anymore and I am so glad because putting a reflective acoustic song on an album that also contains "Take Back" is a punk move. It's an almost undeniable fact.

Get this album. Listen to it. Then listen to it again. It's a masterpiece and that's not really a word I throw around lightly.

Green Day - Worry Rock
Green Day - Reject
Green Day - Scattered

You can buy Nimrod at Amazon, Amazon MP3, and iTunes