Tag Archives: nimrod

#1163: Green Day – Scattered

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Feels like I only ever write about Green Day songs from Nimrod lately. Two of them did appear in the ‘R’ section, and sure that would have been months ago at this point. But the last song from another Green Day album I wrote about was ‘Pulling Teeth’, and that was over a year ago. Not that I want to sound like I’m complaining. That’s a tone I always aim to try and avoid when writing these things. Nimrod‘s up there in my favourite Green Day albums. It’s one of the first albums I downloaded to my old computer when I was properly getting into sitting down and listening to albums in about ’09. This is a story I’ve told before. But as a result, although it might not be the favourite Green Day album of mine, it does hold a special place for sure.

‘Scattered’ is fifth track on there, and is an example of the band being at their most power-poppest, for lack of a better adjective. It’s surprising to me that it wasn’t a single back in the Nimrod times, because it definitely could have been one. Though maybe it’s just a case that it was the obvious choice for a single that the band decided against it. If that makes sense. Being punk rock and all. But it ticks all the right boxes. There’s something about the song that makes it sound like it should have been existing way before the ’90s. Think it’s all down to the melody. Such an accessible one that you’d think it would have been used by any other songwriter to have existed before Billie Joe Armstrong and co. got the track down. But as far as I’m aware, there’s no song from the decades that preceded it whose melody was stolen, nabbed or tweaked in order to ‘Scattered’ the track it is.

The song is about a person who goes on a bit of an emotional trip after seeing a bunch of pictures ‘scattered’ on the floor, containing images of another person of interest who they miss tremendously. A wave of regret and despair comes crashing in, and the narrator wishes that they could be together again. Quite sad stuff that you maybe wouldn’t pick up on at first because of the track’s velocity and general catchiness. I’m gonna assume that the lyrics do come from a personal place. Billie Joe Armstrong at the point of Nimrod was already married and had had a child. Being the frontman of a band who was continuously on tour throughout ’94 to ’96 would have taken its toll. So I think the track’s a little love letter to his wife. Possibly. Anyone can tell me I’m wrong. But all in all, I enjoy this one a lot. Won’t get a skip from me.

#1108: Green Day – Reject

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Hey, look at that, another Green Day song. And so soon. Oh, and it’s from Nimrod again too. Well, that’s just swell. I couldn’t repeat how I came across it after having done that so recently. I’m at a bit of a loss here, people. What’s an introductory paragraph if I’ve already done the introduction in another recent post? I may have to write a little less for this post. And not because I don’t think this song’s any lesser than all the others on here. Merely because it’s just over two minutes in length, and it’s over as soon as you’ve blinked a couple hundred times. In the album where Green Day branched out and experimented with their sound a little, ‘Reject’ is one of the few outright punk rock tracks on there that brings things to familiar territory.

The backstory of the song’s lyrical subject matter is quite humorous. In 1996, Billie Joe Armstrong received a letter from a disgruntled mother whose son received a copy of the band’s Insomniac album for their birthday. Now, you’d ask what was she expecting? I would agree with you. It’s like someone in the family had no idea who Green Day was and got the son this present. Or the son knew exactly what music the band made and was trying to hide it. Anyway, Armstrong got this letter, thought the sentiment was stupid and wrote a reply – a lyric in ‘Reject’ is taken verbatim from it. The rest of the song’s lyrics are what I guess to be an extension of what he would have wanted to write to this parent, had he thought it was worth the ink he was writing with.

Coming right after a slower, walking-paced track on the album, ‘Reject’ makes its presence known immediately with a commanding drum fill from Tré Cool before the rest of the band launch into frame and Armstrong delivers the song’s first line. The track is fast and furious (sorry) in its delivery. The rhythm’s punchy and emphatic, I’m a fan of the open/closed hi-hat work from Cool during the verses, and those chord changes in the “You’re not my type” sections are pretty awesome too. The second verse comes along with more of the same with the second chorus following after. Dirnt takes the forefront in the breakdown with some really fast octave-jumping bass work before the band build some tension, staying on one chord for a matter of moments before finishing it all off with a strong finish. The track’s a good kick-out-the-jams moment at the time it arrives on Nimrod. Like I said, I think it’s just a reminder that the band could still deliver some good, ol’ fast punk rock if listeners were feeling their way through the changes in style that happened between the album’s songs up to that point. And it’s some good work, that’s all I can say.

#1106: Green Day – Redundant

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Green Day’s Nimrod was one of the first albums I ever thought to download to my computer. Up until about 2008/09, I was solely into getting CDs for birthdays and Christmas presents. When I did try and various individual songs from websites, I would then be reprimanded by my sister who’d wag her finger at me and tell me it was a bad thing to do. But I carried on doing it like the rebellious youth I was. In 2009, 21st Century Breakdown had just been released, a long while since American Idiot. I already owned the latter, Dookie and 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours (for some reason) in physical forms – so I guess the downloading of Nimrod was just a way of completing a mission to hear the rest of Green Day’s discography. This was before all the streaming of today, it was a much more difficult task back in those times.

I was already very familiar with Nimrod’s fourth track, though. It’s ‘Redundant’, a song that was also released as the album’s third single in its era of ’97/’98. When I was a small, small boy, going back to 2005, I thought Green Day’s ‘Holiday’ was the best song in the world. I thought Green Day was so cool. So I found their website, and all of their music videos were available to watch on there. It took a lot of buffering on Windows Media Player to get those things running smoothly. But when they worked, that was it. The gateway into Green Day had opened. I say all this to say the video for ‘Redundant’ was on the site too. I’d watch it occasionally. It wasn’t one of the videos I’d repeatedly revisit compared to those for, say, ‘Stuck with Me’, ‘Minority’ or ‘Walking Contradiction’. But I did think it was a great song still. So when coming back to it in 2009 and hearing it within the actual context of Nimrod, the memory of watching its video brought the melodies and all back to me and reminded me how finely written a song it was.

Wikipedia and Genius appear to share the same thought that the song is inspired by frontman and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong’s relationship with his wife and how things weren’t going so great within it at the time of writing. There’s no interview or any quote that backs that up, however. So, with the hope of not repeating something that might not be the case, I’ll just say the song is about a general relationship that’s lost its spark and turned into one where the day-by-day efforts feel phoned-in and forced, so much so that even saying ‘I love you’ doesn’t fill the void. Two verses, three choruses and an instrumental break is all that’s needed to express the sentiments in the track, with the three members all contributing toward a solid performance. It’s not a song of gigantic changes in dynamics or sudden changes in direction. It’s all rather mid-tempo. But I always sort of clench my fists and screw my face whenever those choruses comes in with the descending chord progression, the pummeling tom-toms and Billie Joe Armstrong’s passionate vocal. There’s just so much emotion throughout. And that’s where this song succeeds for me.

#918: Green Day – Nice Guys Finish Last

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Green Day’s Nimrod goes down as the album of the band’s where Billie Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt and Tré Cool decided to experiment a little bit. Steering away from the harsh, pessimistic tone of Insomniac a couple years before, the three pursued in writing material that covered different styles of rock music and utilising a wider range of instrumentation. Outside of Dookie and American Idiot, it’s probably the record that’s loved the most amongst Green Day fans. But before all the experimentation starts, it all kicks off with a nice traditional punk-rock track in the form of ‘Nice Guys Finish Last’.

The song isn’t really about anything in particular. A lot of the lyrics are just common sayings and phrases from everyday life – case in point, the title – that Armstrong puts some sarcastic and joking twists on. Not to scoff at anyone who has found some level of meaning or a story in the words, but I truly feel there’s nothing that the listener is supposed to latch onto. That doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it because you definitely can. What helps the track is the band’s overall performance and the great melodies throughout. What normally gets me pumped throughout is Tré Cool’s drumming. It’s fair to say he’s never been the weak point in Green Day song, but in this particular one it seems like he doesn’t have any moment to breathe. One moment he’s rapidly tapping away on the hi-hat before switching to the ride cymbal and throwing in all those fills in between. There’s a moment where Armstrong does this grunt thing before the last instrumental section of the track that’ll caught me surprise upon first listen, but feels very appropriate within the context the more times you hear it.

On a personal level, it took me a while to warm up to this track. I’d known it since about 2005 when I was really into Green Day. It was probably the second band I properly geeked out on after The Darkness. The music video (as you can see above) was on the band’s website. I thought the track was all right and nothing much, but I was nine/ten at the time and didn’t know much better. Probably because compared to ‘Hitchin’ a Ride’, it sounded too normal. Now I listen to ‘Nice Guys’ more than I do ‘Hitchin”. It just does the job.

My iPod #531: Green Day – Hitchin’ a Ride

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Green Day’s 1997 album Nimrod exhibited a change in the band’s musical direction. Differing vastly from the angst and rough punk rock sounds delivered two years prior on Insomniac, Billie Joe, Mike and Tré decided to branch out from their origins and make an album where they weren’t confined to one type of sound. This new sense of freedom resulted in a total of thirty songs being recorded before they were whittled down to create one of Green Day’s most eclectic record to date.

“Hitchin’ a Ride” was the first single to be released from Nimrod. Whilst not explicitly showing the experimentation that was to come in the album, one could tell that there was something different about the band. It is much different from the first single used to promote the previous album. A mysterious violin opens the song, before its chugging four note riff takes over. Remaining relatively calm for the majority of the beginning, bar the instrumental break where the riff is played with more venom, things don’t get very rowdy until halfway through. The chorus finally arrives for the first time and all hell breaks loose shortly after Armstrong yells “SHIT” from the pit of his stomach.

“Hitchin’ a Ride” manages to symbolise the change in style Green Day were going through at the time whilst also giving off the vibe that this was the same Green Day who had released “Basket Case” a few years earlier. It was a wise decision to use it as the first song to represent their new material. People would at least be a bit more prepared for what was to come.