Were Green Day really that irrelevant in the late 90's/early 2000's?

[deathtofalsesushi]

I think their "irrelevance" is kind of why they're still around and popular today.

Where the fuck are Limp Bizkit, or The Vines, or those other bands that were at the forefront of the "next big thing" in music?

I've heard some interviews with Cake, who have been around since the mid 90's and just had their first Billboard #1 album last year (an independent release, no less). They cited the fact that they've kept basically the same sound throughout their career, and didn't try to adapt to current trends, and that allowed them to outlast the nu-metal and grunge bands when those scenes died. Green Day isn't making the same album over and over, but they basically sound like some variation of Green Day on every record.

[Mar]

As someone who was only 10-14 or so in the years leading up to AI, and a person who strictly listened to Top 40 music, I knew of them, knew Good Riddance, but that's about it. I remember when Warning came out (although, as I said, it wasn't the type of music I listened to at that time because they weren't TRL stalwarts ) and it seemed like the band was, oddly, already being pegged as a kind of nostalgia group. Like their glory days were over and this was SUPPOSED to be a more low-key album, if that makes sense.

So, I don't know if it was that they were necessarily "irrelevant," it's just that for some misguided reason, they were already being treated as a nostalgia act, only six years after their breakthrough. Yes, their accomplishments were still lauded, but from an outsider's perspective (and by "outsider," I mean an 11-year-old girl who was eagerly awaiting the new BSB CD but read about Green Day in YM and Seventeen so I had some awareness ), it was almost like a purposeful last hurrah. Or at least a gift to the die-hards.

[Mr. Shluffy]

stole my brother's Dookie

Haha 'stole my brother's dookie' is hilarious out of context. But I digress. If you look at it from a purely mainstream/pop culture perspective, I would say Green Day was certainly irrelevant between the release of Warning and American Idiot. Good Riddance certainly kept them somewhat commercially viable thru the late 90's. I think the success of American Idiot, and the fact that they had a second smash-hit album gave them a lot more staying power. They are a very respected group at this point due to their prolonged success, so I don't think we will have to worry about any more periods of irrelevance. Although, during any period where a band hasn't recently released an album or isn't touring, they are technically irrelevant from the "what have you done for me lately" corollary that permeates pop culture

[Nebula]

I think their "irrelevance" is kind of why they're still around and popular today.

Where the fuck are Limp Bizkit, or The Vines, or those other bands that were at the forefront of the "next big thing" in music?

I've heard some interviews with Cake, who have been around since the mid 90's and just had their first Billboard #1 album last year (an independent release, no less). They cited the fact that they've kept basically the same sound throughout their career, and didn't try to adapt to current trends, and that allowed them to outlast the nu-metal and grunge bands when those scenes died. Green Day isn't making the same album over and over, but they basically sound like some variation of Green Day on every record.

This is a good point. Green Day were the "snotty, brat nosed punks" in the mid 90's. By the time Warning came out in 2000, instead of lashing out at everything and playing high energy pop punk, they had acoustic guitars and harmonicas and were singing "hold on to yourself". I think a lot of people just didn't know what to make of it since this really was a different band than the one that had put out Dookie just 6 years prior. Warning cemented the fact that they were not going to be pigeon holed into just being a pop punk band (a process that began with Nimrod). I think the disconnect lies in the fact that the public knew them as one thing, and now they were trying to become something else in a way. I think people were unsure of whether or not to take them seriously. By the time American Idiot came out, not only did their message resonate with a lot of people, but they were also a little older and enough time had gone by where I think a lot of people were able to kind of forget about the whole punk stigma they had attached to themselves in the 90's (a lot of the fans they gained during this period weren't even aware Green Day were around in the 90's!) and just accept the music for what it was. If they released an album like Warning today, I think it would be more accepted than it was in 2000. It could be that in the late 90's/early 2000's, Green Day were victims of their own reputation. But I still don't consider them to be such a non factor during that period. Good Riddance and Minority were both pretty big hits, and they graced the covers of many magazines and appeared on all of the late night talk shows. Their 1998 Edgefest performance was broadcast on HBO and MTV even aired their Live Without Warning concert in 2000. I think they were always a pretty big deal, they were just kind of on the sidelines for a while.

[pucky]

To me, that thing about Green Day (or any other band) being relevant or not is irrelevant (oh, the irony). When Nimrod came out I was too young so I can't tell, but according to many of you, Green Day was not "relevant" in that period, and yet Nimrod is one of their best albums, and very well considered among fans and not so fans. And, on the other hand, we have the 21CB period, where Green Day was really "relevant". And it turns out that that record is one of their worst albums for a lot of fans and not so fans.

So I don't really care if they are not relevant, as long as that idea doesn't affect the band.