It's very catchy, but not super-impressive musically IMO, however it had a huge impact on the scene and entire ecosystem at the time. Many other bands piggy-backed off their success, which I'm not sure happens as much in today's mega-single model. The band has gotten continually better while still staying relevant as well, which is really cool.
Green Day, especially the Dookie album, is kind of the epitome of "Yeah, you could have wrote it, but you didn't."
Not to mention, it's more than any single riff. It's the way the chorus ends then that little bass fill hits. And just the combination of the music with the lyrics. There's just that something that just gets everything right enough.
Take Basket Case, the song is pretty fucking simple musically. But it really serves as sort of click track to the vocals.
Taking simplicity and turning it into art takes skill.
Having said that... :)
... GD are very much above average musically when it comes to the popular music of the last 30 years. With those songwriting/performing chops, it's almost surprising they are a punk rock band.
Agree. Approximately rank 65 on best-selling albums of all time, but generally ranked in the 250-350 range on top 500 albums of all time. Such more subjective measures probably include sales/popularity as one of the ranking factors, so one could think that the album is of particularly below-expected "quality" to drag it down a few hundred positions.
