Kerplunk

Product Information

a b Raggett, Ned. " Kerplunk! Review". AllMusic. Rovi. Archived from the original on March 14, 2011 . Retrieved June 19, 2011.

Revisiting the band’s attitude towards their craft as young upstarts, he added: “But when it came to music, they were Very Serious Indeed. I was working with a lot of young bands in those days, and one thing I constantly struggled with was getting musicians to strike the right balance between having fun and making the most of their musical abilities. That’s another part of the story that’s worth talking about: Kerplunk sold 50,000 copies by the end of 1992, making it by far the biggest release Lookout! Records had ever produced. Despite including a letter of loyalty to Lookout on their debut 39/Smooth, the band released they had hit a ceiling with the independent label. Upon their signing to Reprise Records, Green Day were excommunicated from their roots: barred from Gillman, shunned by hometown friends, and viciously insulted in fan zines proclaiming them as the worst thing a ’90s band could be – sell outs. Some call it slums, some call it nice" - it's only slums when you look at it from a distance. But when you live and breathe it - it becomes nice because it is your home. Not your parents' home, but one of your own - and it's Paradise. The song is filled with the spirit of the album expressing the difficulties of realizations of one's mistakes and self-deception. The narrator takes the blame for his actions and admits everything he's done wrong - but he can't change anything, and once again he's left without an answer to the one question that keeps dwelling in his mind: "Why?" It's a common belief that this song is about a place where the author and his friends used to go to get high. However, this is only a part of it, and the lyrics are mostly not about smoking weed but simply about a place where you want to go when you need to be alone - a place that you can call home. The narrator says that Christie Road is a place where he feels comfortable and where he can relax. He goes there when he's stressed out because that's the place where he feels complete, where he can forget about the rest of the world and just be himself.The narrator in this song expresses his fear of growing up and turning into someone who has to plan out everything they do. He sees that his friends are ageing and realizes that this will inevitably happen to him too. He doesn't express a certain opinion - he simply looks at both sides of the problem and tries to figure out what to do. He's saying that he doesn't want to live a planned out life, but wants to stay spontaneous and have fun for as long as he can. Yet, he's saying that sometimes he unintentionally hurts people with who he is, and that makes him wonder whether he should somehow change, have a plan for life, grow up. He's wondering whether what he's doing with his life is right. Krovatin, Chris. "Green Day's Kerplunk! Is An Unspoiled '90s Punk Gem". Kerrang! . Retrieved August 15, 2021. AllMusic regards Kerplunk as the "perfect dry run" for the band's later mainstream appeal, saying it contains "both more variety and more flat-out smashes than previous releases had shown." [15] Pitchfork Media states "All in all, it's a magnitude better than its predecessor and only a hair behind the follow up." [6]

Larkin, Colin (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th conciseed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8. Greatest Pop Punk Albums". Rolling Stone. 15 November 2017. Archived from the original on 8 October 2019 . Retrieved 8 October 2019. In this song, the narrator is admitting the mistakes he's made in a relationship with someone he really loved. He confesses that this was "something real" that he could have had, but he lost it and it was solely his own fault. He has the best memories about the girl he loved and he regrets that he didn't try hard enough to keep what they had together, but now it's too late and all he can do is "take the pain". Spitz, Marc (2006). Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day. New York: Hyperion. p. 76. ISBN 1-4013-0274-2.Christie Rd is off Hwy 4 between our hometown Rodeo and Martinez, CA. My brother hung out there first. Then my friends hung out there too."

Jenkins, Craig (April 22, 2021). "The Best and Most Misunderstood of Green Day, According to Billie Joe Armstrong". Vulture . Retrieved April 28, 2022.All these realizations lead the narrator to another serious question, and that is whether there is a God, whether there is someone or something that actually knows the answers to eternal questions. Like so many others he was praying at night because he'd been told that this was the right thing to do. Now he's reached the time when he starts questioning whether he believes in that himself - so far he has no answers. And he's wondering if he's just been lying to himself all along.