Why did Green Day stick on you?

[Bassgirl_1984]

Green Day was the first band I could really connect with...the emotions in their music and their attitude about life. They're the type of band that is not afraid to say it like it is regardless of what other people think. They don't just take things at face value because an authority figure says it's so...this is a philosophy I adopted from them when I was a kid. I was going through hell and green day's music was something that reached out to me and made me feel connected to something. The anger and frustration, the lonliness and confusion, being an outsider...all things I connected to. It was that rock in the chaos I suppose you could say. And it's still there after 10+ years...and I'm sure always will be. Their honesty and passion for what they do...I don't think they're in it for the money which is more then most bands can say. They also introduced me to the world of punk...they had a fun side and a dark side...I could go on and on about this

[gloria.]

I first found out about them from my cousin.

It was March Break and we were on a road trip. He was showing me Bullet In A Bible.

And instantly, I fell in love with the men on the screen.

I grew up on a lot of basic pop music. My parents always gave that to me.

And this band was the first one I really loved.

Not only did the lyrics were relatable to me, the sound just captivated me as well.

I love them and most likely, always will.

[deanopeez]

1994. Dookie. I was in 6th grade, and I was NOT cool. In my house, the only music I'd been raised on was country and oldies - not that there's ANYTHING wrong with that. But I was starting to realize there was a bigger world around me, and I was going to have to fit in to it. And then, all of a sudden, there's this band - with the singer who's British isn't he? And they threw mud at people, and they had that CRAZY video. And they CUSSED on their tapes. And I was hooked. Green Day's music gave my friends and I something to cling to; it helped us find our own place. Pissed off? Throw in "FOD" and throw down. Feeling lost? Put on "When I Come Around" and realize you're not alone. From that day forward, NO band has been able to get inside me the way GD has. I love EVERY album, and I don't think the guys could ever put out a record I didn't love. My fiancee has been driven nuts since 21CB came out. "Gosh, I knew they were you're favorite band, but damn. Why's it gotta be all GD all the time?"

Because they're a part of who I am. Every new record is a monument in my life. It's gonna be with me forever.

Long Live Green Day.

[Brian]

Every album has a song or two that I can relate to. American Idiot helped me open my doors to Rock music and allowed me to listen to other bands.

Their music just made sense to me.

[Ally]

Every album has a song or two that I can relate to. American Idiot helped me open my doors to Rock music and allowed me to listen to other bands.

Their music just made sense to me.

yeah same here, American Idiot helped me a lot and then when i listed to other green day songs they just drew me in, and pretty much made em realise what life was about etc.

[likeahandgrenade]

well i first heard of green day when "when i come around" was on the radio. keep in mind i was like 4 so i never had any idea who was playing it. same goes for "good riddance," etc.

and i mean i always liked those songs, so then when i was in 8th grade american idiot came out and a few of my friends fell absolutely in love with green day. they made me listen to them too and i think the song that really stuck out for me was "holiday" idk why, but i still love it. then my friends gave me some of their old albums and i found i liked songs like "the grouch" or "welcome to paradise" or "church on sunday" just as much as american idiot.

we kind of considered it cool to like GD in 8th grade, so a lot of ppl liked them, but i still like them now even when every other person i meet is like "ew green day sucks" lol

[Steven Samuels]

Wow, well...it started in I think '04 when I started to see the stupidity of the Iraq war. I remember listening to American Idiot (the song) a few months prior and went "This is so unpatriotic and disrespectful. How dare these punks soil America!" And of course, the other kids I knew felt the same way. However I re-listened to the song and noticed that it wasn't anti-American, it was pro-self thinking. Which is truly what makes America great. So....I hate to sound retarded about that but then I kinda forgot about them....Then last year I was in the hospital after complications from surgery I got kinda suicidal. Anyways, I was listening to the radio and heard Holiday. I heard those two words again "Green Day" and had my mom buy me the AI album. Its kinda the reason im still here is cuz they made me think about something else. ^_^ And now I'm healthy and loving 21CB! >D So yeah.

[Jack96]

well i first heard of green day when "when i come around" was on the radio.

That definately one of the songs that made GD stick on me

[torey elise]

The first song I ever even heard of Green Day's was Boulivard of Broken Dreams, and at the young age I was, I didnt even know who Green Day was, but then I started hearing it more and more on the radio and whatnot, so I decided to look the band up, (thanks Wikipedia)! LOL.

And then, I happened to find a Green Day CD of my brothers. ; International Superhits. So I nicked it. And collected more and more and more.

Plus their lyrics are practically what everyone can relate to, now and back in the day when they first came around.

[Bexie.]

Green Day stuck on me because the sticky remover I bought wouldnt remove them and now im stuck with them.. But it definately insnt a bad thing

My friend introduced me too them,

the first album I got was International Superhits,

my friend she leant it to me.

The first song she showed me was 'good riddance'.. total awesomeness.

That was back in 2002 and theres not been one moment where I havent loved any part of their music.

They are true Legends

[.Militza.]

Because they are the first band who's CD I bought and never skipped a song from it.

And the fact they're different, and can describe everything that I'm going through.

[IamRobotHearMeRoar]

I think it was/is because Green Days songs are the only songs from a band i can have some real connection to.

I first got into them when i was around 7. So back then it was probably becaus i just liked the sound of the music

[Kaddi.]

Because I liked every single song on American Idiot... and that had never happened to me before, there has always been at least one song on an album that I didn't like. So I looked for more Green Day albums after a while and they were all great.

They're just the best.

[Bastard of 1967]

My first exposure to Green Day was back in the Nimrod era, what was it, around '97 or '98?, when Good Riddance hit the adult top 40 charts...so that would have been about 11 years or so ago (probably before half this board was born, but I'm scaring myself now and I digress!) Anyway, that was back before the day when you could download your favorite tunes for a buck a pop, so I figured "what a nice, sweet song and pleasant orchestration, I should go out and get the album!" Ya, like I knew what I was getting myself into, riiiight?? First song out of the CD player was "Nice Guys Finish Last," followed by "Hitchin' A Ride" and "The Grouch" ...NOW I was getting a REAL taste of Green Day, and it was a much different picture than Good Riddance had painted for me. Long story short: I ripped Good Riddance, Redundant, and Uptight to MP3 for my then-fledgeling digital music collection, and shelved the rest of the album.

Fast-forward to the spring of 2005. I'd was in my mid-30s and just the past fall had been through what people commonly call the "quarter-life crisis" now -- a broken engagement, a financial crisis, and having to pull my life back together again -- and BOBD hit the radio. I can't tell you how quickly that song sucked me in. I still had a good job and by that point had a wonderful new girlfriend (now my wife and mother of our little girl), but I guess I had reached the point where the "HOOOO that was close.....!!!" after-the-fact adrenaline had started to wallop me emotionally. Something about the pleading, yet accepting, loneliness of the music and Billie Joe's brilliant lyrics in BOBD just spoke volumes to me. A couple of weeks later, BOBD was followed up on the radio by Holiday (which spoke equally loudly to the political anger and frustration I was feeling), and then later that year WMUWSE hits the charts....at this point I just had to buy American Idiot.

I enjoyed AI, but never really had a chance to give it a good long listen until a business trip sometime in mid-2007. By now my wife was pregnant with our little girl, and listening to the whole storyline of AI and thinking "OMG I know people like these characters! You mean I have to raise a CHILD in this world?? How the hell am I ever going to be able to do that, and not have her turn out like them??" I discovered that the album asked all the right questions....it was short on answers, but it asked all the questions that were so, so relevant to what I was about to experience as a parent. I think that's the point when I really began to appreciate Green Day, and to understand just how incredible an artist and lyricist that Billie Joe Armstrong had become. St. Jimmy and She's A Rebel led me to appreciate Tre Cool's unbelievable talent as a drummer, and as for Mike -- his bass lines are all over that album and do so much to make it what it is. (Then I find out that all three guys are parents themselves, that Billie Joe had been happily married with two kids for over 10 years at that point, and for the first time I began to think maybe there's some f*cking HOPE for me?)

After this it was only a matter of time before I pulled Nimrod back off the shelf, listened to it start-to-finish, and found that I enjoyed it nearly as much as AI. I backtracked from there, picking up Dookie, Insomniac, and Warning from iTunes, plus a handful of deeper cuts from Superhits, 1039/Smooth, Shenanigans, and Kerplunk.

More recently I bought BIAB, which convinced me that I'd missed out on something special on their last tour. This time I'm ready -- I joined GDC during the lead-up to 21CB's release, and it's been so much fun following all the band news, interviews, and concert recaps (it's also been a lot of fun meeting so many of y'all who hang out here too!) I love how the album turned out and am SO looking forward to seeing Green Day in Washington DC on July 29! Alas, at the (wise!) insistence of my wife we have seats in section 100 rather than GA -- I must confess that we're too f*cking old to hold up in the pit.

Thanks everyone for sharing your stories!

[Maddy.]

I dunno, my parents tried to keep me away from "bad stuff". Like GD But then I discovered youtube, limewire etc. and then I saw GD on the music channel on the tv. I downloaded it and the rest of the stuff. I already knew a few bands but GD was the first band I connected to because their songs were sort of emotional (for me). I still get a frog in my throat with WMUWSE But that's for whole different reasons...

The way they're so modest, happy, hyper and their humour Other bands are usually really stuck up/arrogant. GD is special, one of a kind, unique, hot , and just so fucking amazing at what they do.

Amen

[NowhereBound]

All I ever listened to was what my parents listened to... :/

So...Green Day saved me

[GDM]

Alas, at the (wise!) insistence of my wife we have seats in section 100 rather than GA -- I must confess that we're too f*cking old to hold up in the pit.

Thanks everyone for sharing your stories!

Don't worry, there are a few more around here that are about your age... and I'm going for some of my last moments in the pit, and will be seeing them twice on the floor and once in nice comfy seats in New York. But I won't be sitting long when Billie tells me to get my ass out of my chair!

The first time I heard Green Day was on the MTV Jaded in Chicago special back in the 90s. So, that entire show was my exposure to them, but it wasn't really until American Idiot that I came to appreciate them. AI got me through some dark political times and I'm glad that they had the fortitude to stand up musically and not give a shit about the consequences.

I have all of their albums and I always hate the "new Green Day, old Green Day" argument. Green Day is Green Day and while I didn't see them grow up in real time, it's been great hearing them grow up but not grow old. I've always aspired to that standard.

Back in 2005 I wrote an article on the archival collections of a man named Raphael Lemkin. Lemkin was the first person to systematically write about genocide through the centuries and he actually created the word in 1943 and even before that, in 1933. I get so depressed when I have to write or speak about him, and a few months ago I was asked to present a paper on him. I was pulling my hair out and fighting with myself until "Know Your Enemy" came out and I must have listened to that song a billion times. It was really the only thing that got me through writing and presenting the paper.

[eighteen]

It was 1999, and I was in 6th grade. I was just starting to get into music in general, and there was some seriously shitty music out there to corrupt a young child at the time, but I had also heard of Green Day. I remember my list of cds I wanted but had no money to buy included Hanson, Spice Girls, and Nimrod. My mom took me to Kmart and I collected to cds I wanted, just like everytime we went in there, and that day she caved and said I could get one. I chose Nimrod, thank god, and never looked back. Who knows what kind of person I would have turned out to be if I had picked Spice Girls at such an impressionable age.

[allierin_GDandGDA_fan]

Well, I can remember the day like it was yesterday...

Back in the fall of '06, as a 7th grader, our chorus teacher decided that as a part of our grade, we had to sing in front of the class sometime that year. This was hard for me, being that at the time I didn't really like singing in front of my best friend, let alone my whole class. So, being the girl with no music to choose from, I just listen to the radio. I would know all the words to every song, but had no clue who the artist was. A lot of the songs were either too low or high for me, but one song caught my attention. It was "Wake Me Up When September Ends", and it was perfect. So, I found out what album it was on, and started to listen to the other songs on the CD. I liked quite a few of them, at least what I could make of the 30 second bits of the songs from amazon, and I made my dad get me that CD. And even though this song was my first performance in front of a group of about 50 people, I wasn't nervous at all. I was very comfortable with this song.

Later, I actually went and listened to the album from beginning to end. This is when I realized that Green Day isn't just some group who plays music for the sake of playing music. They played music that could send out a message, and had fun while doing it. I liked that about them. So, I went on to buy all of their albums, picking out songs I liked and didn't like, and enjoying my time.

Now, in the year 2009, a girl going into the 10th grade, I am so excited for the Green Day concert that is coming up on 8.1.09 for me! Green Day will always be my favorite band, no matter what comes along in the music world. And this is all thanks to a required assignment in chorus.

[Noe_ur_ennemy]

It's time for my story

I was listening to GD when I was young because my uncle had Dookie really love!! but I was not knowing that was GD and that this band will become my favorite and will be really present in my life!!

I get into GD many years later:

i was 12 years old and my Best friend tell me to look for Green day new single american idiot on the internet.

the day after as I was ready to go school and I was listening the TV and at the news they show a little part of THE video(like if God want that I saw this video)! I completely fall in love!!I was a young teen and I was in search of an idol, someone or some people and something to help me go tru my adolescence.

the music became my life buoy

and GD my model!! when I saw the video ,the attitude of GD hung me , the way that they talk about Bush...

SO after this day GD never quit my life!!

[sharon mitchell]

I think this band is so stuck on me now that they are always going to be a part of my life. I have this weird empathy with them - like turning on the radio to a GD song at random times EVERY time, or the fact that one of their tracks ALWAYS finishes as I pull up on my drive (my house is called Longview - maybe that's why?).

I found the precise moment that I fell for them the other day - a note scribbled in a 1994 kitchen diary - look at the date - it's spooky.

Without this band, I wouldn't have made around fifty new friends in the past four years; I wouldn't have gone to Paris by myself (at the age of fifty, I'd never been abroad alone before).

I wouldn't have started collecting vinyl and cds with as much enthusiasm - so arguably I'd be better off!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8526...mp;l=df177cff45

I also wouldn't be spending my time making things like this ...

and this

And I'm damn sure I wouldn't be half as happy as I am today.

We're stuck like glue and I couldn't be more delighted.

[Hermione]

^Reading that made me smile, it's so cool that you found that note! What an amazing souvenir to have. And you're so right, the amount of happiness they have brought me couldn't be measured. It's things like this that remind me (if I needed reminding) just how incredible the band is that they can have such a wonderful impact on people.

I spy a sexy guy in the 3rd picture too

[Opezi]

That i can understand and relate to most of their songs. they have great music and they are sexy lol. i grew up listeing to green day so i've always loved them

[RebelofSuburbia]

I think this band is so stuck on me now that they are always going to be a part of my life. I have this weird empathy with them - like turning on the radio to a GD song at random times EVERY time, or the fact that one of their tracks ALWAYS finishes as I pull up on my drive (my house is called Longview - maybe that's why?).

I found the precise moment that I fell for them the other day - a note scribbled in a 1994 kitchen diary - look at the date - it's spooky.

[im g]http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e127/sharonlynnemitchell/P1030342.jpg

Without this band, I wouldn't have made around fifty new friends in the past four years; I wouldn't have gone to Paris by myself (at the age of fifty, I'd never been abroad alone before).

[im g]http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e127/sharonlynnemitchell/P1030096.jpg

I wouldn't have started collecting vinyl and cds with as much enthusiasm - so arguably I'd be better off!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8526...mp;l=df177cff45

I also wouldn't be spending my time making things like this ...

[im g]http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e127/sharonlynnemitchell/P1030317.jpg

and this

[img ]http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e127/sharonlynnemitchell/P1030359.jpg

And I'm damn sure I wouldn't be half as happy as I am today.

We're stuck like glue and I couldn't be more delighted.

wow you've discovered them at mr Armstrong's birthday I totally know where you're coming from.. I really don't know what my life would've been like without Green Day in it. Even though I haven't really done all the things you listed. (yet)

That Fink teddy is awesome btw!

[sharon mitchell]

Thanks - as far as I know there are only two Finkbears in the world - and I made both of them. John Roeker aka Doctor Svengali loves him, too. I noticed the other day the bear even has his own Facebook page!

This band has thrown me a whole list of coincidences - some tiny, some huge. I've met people randomly both through the fansites and in person who are now considered as family.