BLUF: This is my favorite Green Day album.

It goes back to their episode of Behind the Music where Armstrong’s wife said he didn’t write songs as a teenager anymore because he WASN’T a teenager. He was an adult with adult issues and he was writing adult songs.

Now, 17-year-old me did NOT like this album but I learned two critical things from it:

1) The albums that require a little more thought before going all-in as a fan are usually the best ones. They challenge you and you learn about yourself in the process.

2) She was right. I genuinely don’t think there’s anything more punk than writing mature songs about the missteps of adulthood and the frustration with a middle-aged life because that’s not what sells. That’s not what the kids (or adults who still want to cosplay as such) want so to do is to really put yourself out there and, once I heard that, it clicked for me.

I also really liked the guitar tone. Yeah, there’s a LOT of acoustic on this record but that fat P90 growl from a Les Paul Jr is really tough to beat.

I just wish this album had been more successful. I think they saw the numbers and decided to veer into the waters that have the cash. Armstrong himself said about the follow-up to this album that it’s all about being 14 and rocking out in front of your bedroom mirror.

That’s a far cry from what was said on Behind the Music and I wish we got the chance to see where a more successful WARNING: could have gone.

And, just as a side note, I love how Armstrong is constantly pushing out new signature models because out of his… three(?) generations of Gibson models, the internet seems to agree that the one that feels the closest to his #1 is actually the Epiphone and that sounds like Armstrong, proving success with Gibsons so he could give the good stuff to the poor people playing in their rooms.

Yeah. Big fan.

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