(Credits: Spotify)
Mon 30 March 2026 3:00, UK
There is no other kid that was born around the turn of the century who hasn’t been changed by listening to Billie Joe Armstrong.
Although Green Day were the last band to take themselves seriously every single time they made one of their records, the fact that Armstrong had an album like American Idiot was something that anyone would have guessed when they were still writing songs about masturbation and how their parents didn’t understand them. Armstrong had a lot more to say outside of teen angst, but he did feel that there were some pieces of his discography that weren’t supposed to stand the test of time.
Because when you look through the track record that Green Day have had, there are more than a few times where they bit off a little more than they could chew. 21st Century Breakdown had already received a bit of flak for being a bit too much as one operatic piece, but when you look through the trilogy that they made directly afterwards, even Armstrong had to admit that the whole thing was absolutely absurd when they started working on it.
But you can easily blame that on Armstrong getting a little bit more frazzled behind the scenes. Now that we know that he was going through struggles with addiction around that time, you can definitely hear the fatigue starting to set in on those albums. They had been running themselves ragged for so long, and when they finally had time to rest and regroup, records like Revolution Radio at least put them in a better place than they were.
Not everything has been spotless since then, but for Armstrong, a lot of the more embarrassing stuff ends up turning up the further back you go in the timeline. Dookie may have been the litmus test for what pop-punk was going to be, but back when they were still a band trying to figure things out on indie labels, it’s not like their songs were given the proper treatment that they deserved.
To their credit, Kerplunk managed to sound pretty solid for an underground release, but when looking through their debut, there were bound to be a few stumbling blocks. ‘I Was There’ is clearly a sign of things to come with Armstrong’s bulletproof chorus melody, but when looking through their series of EPs done before they had an album out, the frontman remembered being more than a little bit disheartened when going back and listening to 1000 Hours all over again.
Tre Cool not being in the band yet is already a knock against it, but Armstrong simply felt that he wasn’t ready to show himself as a songwriter just yet, saying, “If I had to get rid of one record from our back catalogue, I’d go with the 1,000 Hours EP. It’s the first one, it was short and it contains the mushiest lyrics I ever wrote – even though it got the ball rolling for us.” And it’s not like he doesn’t have a small point there.
A lot of the lyrics on the record are basic love song fodder, and half the time, the band are a little bit confused on what they want to sound like. Armstrong is clearly pulling from the guitar heroes that he grew up on when he tries to solo, and as for production value, it’s hard to really give it that many points since the mix makes the whole thing sound blatantly out of tune, especially on a song like ‘Dry Ice’.
Every band does have to take their first step eventually, but when you look at where they would go from here, no one would have thought that the guys that turned up on this EP would one day have a song like ‘Welcome to Paradise’ inside of them. They needed a few more years before getting there, but for any Green Day completionists, you’re better off starting off listening to Kerplunk before this.
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