Green Day releasing a new album is a global event. They’re one of the last rock bands to warrant this kind of interest.

Because of their mammoth success, they are primarily beloved but also passionately disliked by a minority consisting of old-school punk. One thing is sure; they are still a highly noteworthy rock band.

Because of Green Day’s status, not to mention the length of their discography, I’ve had to really consider how to rank their albums from worst to best. I nearly gave up. But I persevered, knowing that Alt77 guides would simply be missing an important piece of the jigsaw otherwise.

Today I look at Green Day’s best albums from a fresh perspective, I reevaluate their first records and don’t shy away from the few career mishaps either. Here’s Green Day’s discography ranked from worst to best.

13. “39/Smooth” (1990)

“39/Smooth” is the debut album by Green Day. It’s an album that makes the band’s trajectory absolutely clear. The Easy Bay band is destined … to be an underground punk band cherished by a core group of fans.

Green Day’s most recognizable elements are already here. The songs are fast, funny, and hooky. They bring elements of hard rock to them. And, in many ways, the band is more ambitious than some of its peers.

Songs like “Green Day” and “At The Library with the Waba Se Wasca” are just ots of fun, prank-like songs in the style of The Dickies. But few could have predicted the band’s upward trajectory.

12. “¡Tré!” (2012)

“¡Tré!” completes the trilogy, provides the obvious punchline and shows that Armstrong could write successful songs nearly on command. But it’s all been a pretty exhausting trip.

Yes, Green Day had finally earned comparisons to great rock bands of old after “American Idiot. So, their trilogy has the same kind of scattershot feel that “The White Album” by The Beatles might have had.

However, the things that helped that album from being a mess of unrelated songs don’t quite translate to this collection.

“¡Tré!” finds Armstrong, once again, throwing every trick he knows into the songs and performances. “Missing You,” “Brutal Love,” or “Sex, Drugs & Violence” are great, fun tracks.

Hardcore fans of the band will be over the moon at having so many songs to add to their collection.

For all other supporters, however, the energy had died down, the hooks had been used before, and some have just heard more Green Day than they would’ve wanted.

Remember that Green Day had released 68 news wongs over the previous eight years! Not even Billy Joe Armstrong can remember all of those.

11. “Revolution Radio” (2016)

“Revolution Radio” feels like a transition record that Green Day had to make. It plays off to many of their strengths. Broadly, it manages to combine many of the elements that had made the pop-punk band good in the first place.

“Bang, Bang” provides social commentary and attempts to sound immediate and riotous. “Revolution Radio” positions Green Day as good-guy punks who’ve studied at the feet of Joe Strummer. And “Outlaws” is an us-against-the-world teenage rocker.

There’s nothing wrong with “Revolution Radio,” but also nothing extraordinary once you’d heard so much Green Day material in the years before its release.

10. “¡Uno!” (2012)

“¡Uno!” announces a new, overblown era for Green Day. While the ambitiousness yields nice results in a while, it’s all a bit exhausting.

But just imagine how Armstrong, Dirnt and Tre Cool must’ve felt. Since “American Idiot”, they’d toured the world and released stage shows, studio albums and live recordings.

Despite this, they were now ready to put out so many songs that the record label had to convince them to split them into three records.

“¡Uno!” is the most pop-friendly. “Kill the DJ” and “Let Yourself Go” show that the band is ready to put grand musical statements on the back burner for a while.

“Oh Love” is a sweet track, but largely rehashes a formula they’d used a lot in recent years.

9. “¡Dos!” (2012)

“¡Dos!” is an album on which Green Day doesn’t try as hard to impress or maintain commercial success. And for these reasons, the results are more pleasant.

Mostly, the songs are cartoonish, fast, hard-rocking, and, best of all, fun.

Green Day was still an excellent garage-rock band. This is not necessarily a quality that endears them to the pop-punk crowds or straight pop fans they accumulated during their most successful runs.

“Stop When the Red Lights Flash” sounds like a classic rock radio jingle built on top of a punk guitar riff.

“F*** Time, “Wild One”, or “Stray Heart” are excellent retro-rock numbers, full of energy and comfortable with their status as minor entries into the Green Day discography.

8. “Nimrod” (1997)

Green Day was the first of its kind, a pop-punk band whose members had turned into television stars. They had good songs and a strong look. But they were easily copied too.

By 1997, the general public had already fallen in and out of love with pop-punk. Keeping track of all the bands who looked like Green Day was a monumental task.

With this in mind, “Nimrod” is the band’s first attempt at bringing new elements into their sound. But they ease into the changes.

“Nice Guys Finish Last” or “Platypus (I Hate You)” are enough for mallrats and high-school kids to justify buying the album.

“Hitchin’ a Ride” and “King for a Day” are excellent, introduce a few extra instruments, and reveal that Green Day’s humour had turned darker.

And “Good Riddance (Time of your Life)” is a pretty, acoustic power ballad. It’d be very successful, featured on “Seinfeld,” and make the remaining old-school punk fans run for the hills.

7. “Kerplunk” (1992)

Billie Joe Armstrong has always been restless. By 1992, he was ready to get Green Day to spread its influence outside of 924 Gillman, the punk club where along with Operation Ivy, they were crowd favourites.

“Kerplunk” showed that they could write punk songs with a pop structure. It also showed that they could maintain their quirky sense of humour while doing this.

The band certainly worked a lot during these days. But the prize was not in view. Grunge, with bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam, was doing for alternative music what had seemed impossible just one year ago.

That’s not to say that Green Day’s sound hadn’t improved. Much of this has to do with adding Tre Cool on drums, taking over for John Kitmeyer.

Secondly, they could now produce songs like “2,000 Light Years Away,” “Who Write Holden Coulfield,” and “Welcome to Paradise,” a song that they’d update for their next release, “Dookie.”

“Kerplunk” is great fun, mainly because it hasn’t yet been overplayed. But it also lays out Green Day’s plan to bring pop-punk to the masses.

6. “Father of All…” (2020)

Green Day tends to be at its best when Armstrong is at his most confident. “Father of All…” finds the band anxious to present poppy garage rock to the entire world.

Still, “Father of All…” is not dramatically different from any of the records following “21st Century Breakdown.” It’s better because there’s more energy and the songs are more memorable.

Green Day‘s attitude, however, did rub some music critics the wrong way. The band proclaimed proudly that the record featured “no features, no Swedish songwriters, no trap beats, just 100% pure uncut rock.”

But the novelty of Green Day’s 100% pure rock may have worn out some of the critics forced to listen through hundreds of songs by the band over the past couple of decades.

Still, those who can set their distrust aside will find a vibrant, fun record with atrociously lousy artwork.

The title track was featured in various video games and is a fun introduction. “Fire, Ready, Aim” and “Oh Yeah!” are as obvious as it gets but also pack quite a few thrills. And “Meet Me on the Roof” and “Stab You in the Heart” sound like Green Day, corresponding to their younger selves.

5. “Insomniac” (1995)

On “Insomniac,” Green Day does just what some of the band’s heroes, The Ramones or The Buzzcocks, did: they make the same album twice. Depending on how much you liked “Dookie,” this can be a great thing. It does, however, help make it one of the more forgettable releases in the Green Day catalogue.

Yes, the speed, the hooks, and the jokes are still there. But it feels like Green Day is now forced to live up to its own hype.

Green Day had become one of the pop-culture reference points of the 1990s. From this point onward, they would be fighting for fame with numerous other pop-punk bands. For the most part, these groups had built their style in reference to “Dookie”.

“Stuck with Me,” “Brain Stew”, and “Walking Contradiction” are good songs, but there’s no reason to fall in love with this record.

4. “21st Century Breakdown” (2009)

“21st Century Breakdown” is a potent record when Green Day attempt to outdo their own release, “American Idiot.”

Green Day had been here before. Armstrong, Dirnt and Tre Cool now knew that playing safe was, eventually, going to lead them nowhere.

Instead, the band dares its new legions of audiences to keep up with their own prodigious new setlist of songs.

“21st Century Breakdown” is another concept record (of sorts), it references classic rock bands like Queen, and it contains 18 songs!

While it is true that the sheer mass of this can get tiring, there are many good songs here. “Last of the American Girls” and “Horseshoes and Handgrenades” prove that Green Day had successfully tapped into the pop hooks of a new era.

“21st Century Breakdown” is theatrical, over the top, and, for the most part, brilliant.

Meanwhile, “Know Your Enemy” and “21 Guns” attempt to recreate the last album’s singles. They’d prove very successful, and, in a way, this would hurt the band in the long term.

3. “Warning” (2000)

“Warning” is one of Green Day’s best albums. This owes to the fact that, for the first time, in more than half a decade, there is precisely no expectation set on the release of it.

Yes, pop-punk had returned to the charts with bands link blink-182 or Sum 41. And, absolutely, they were modelled on Green Day. But Armstrong wasn’t being invited back to the party just yet.

This all means that Armstrong, Dirnt, and Tre Cool can write any kind of song that they want. There’s no pop-punk quota to feel here, and this works out for the better for everyone.

On “Blood, Sex, and Booze”, “Church on Sunday”, or “Warning” the band’s poppy ditties have a new tinge of gloom about them.

“Minority” and “Waiting” are superb singles built on the kind of melodic hooks, not unlike those used by 70s soft-rock bands.

And “Macy’s Day Parade” and “Misery” show that Armstrong could occasionally rival any of the most famous celebrated of his generation.

“Warning” is a real gem. And, in retrospect, it’s a good indication of where the band were heading next.

2. “American Idiot” (2004)

Green Day had lost a lot of battles attempting to maintain its popularity. But the band was about to win the war now that they’d given up fighting.

“American Idiot” works so well because, like “Warning,” it prioritizes good songwriting. Tempos and styles vary. And, throughout the approach feels fresh, and the band is energized.

The fact that the album is sequenced as a would-be-rock opera makes it all the more intriguing. Some would even dare call it “Tommy” for a new generation.

“St. Jimmy,” “Are We The Waiting,” or “Holiday” are great, highly dramatic standalone singles. The “Jesus of Suburbia” suite (a title swiped from one of David Bowie‘s buried treasures) works excellently within the context of the band.

And Green Day achieved such colossal success with this project that even songs like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” “American Idiot”, or “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” not the band’s best work, seems to capture the mood of the time.

Overexposed or not, “American Idiot” was the greatest comeback record of any rock band’s career.

1. “Dookie” (1994)

If Nirvana‘s “Nevermind” had been a bullet to the heart of pop music in 1991, “Dookie” was a punch in the stomach for grunge, a style that for all of its qualities, wasn’t big on good times.

Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool, on the other hand, present themselves as chaos-loving, funny teenagers for whom “Beavis & Butthead” isn’t a comedy but an accurate depiction of life.

The presentation is more heavily highlighted here. Green Day had signed with a major label, Reprise Records, at the behest of producer Rob Cavallo. It was a controversial move within the punk-rock circles they activated.

“Burnout,” Longview,” or “Chump” show off the band’s love of potty humour. This instantly earned them a connection with the wider public through the exposure of MTV.

But, what makes “Dookie” successful through the ages are the perfectly crafted pop singles “Basket Case,” “When I Come Around,” and “She.” Only Nirvana and Weezer produced rock singles that were as finely crafted during the 1990s.

Of course, punk and underground crowds that had supported Green Day felt hurt. They were right; the trio had always wanted more for themselves and were quick to change course when the opportunity revealed itself. But, with songs as strong as “Basket Case,” it’s hard to blame them too much.

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