…In which your favorite blue-haired snot throwing punks grow up?

“Good Riddance” finds Billie Joe Armstrong picking up an acoustic guitar, enlisting a string section, and creating a song that would be used to commemorate graduation ceremonies, proms, weddings and the endings of beloved sitcoms for generations to come. In a typical case of “Every Breath You Take”-itis, a song Billie Joe wrote as a somewhat angry (I mean…the title is “Good Riddance”) kiss-off to an ex-girlfriend became a tune most people associate with happy (if bittersweet) memories. I’ve been a Green Day fan ever since the first time I heard “Longview” in summer 1994 (a crush on Billie Joe-who was the first rock star I actually had an attraction to that outed themselves as LGBTQ+- might have been part of the reason for this), but if I was held down and asked to pick one song from the band as my favorite, this would be it.

Random note: the main and parenthetical titles were switched for the song’s release as a single. I’m gonna keep it O.G.