We here at Bloody Good Music have long asserted that "Warning" is Green Day's best album, and that has been true for twenty-five years now. Looking back, it's amazing to think the record was a disappointment, and that it has all but disappeared from the discourse surrounding Green Day. "Dookie" was widely heralded last year upon its thirtieth anniversary, but in my mind that was only the starting point for where Green Day would one day wind up.
'Power pop' has always been a bit of a dirty term in music, as it doesn't quite appeal to rock fans or pop fans the way something more dedicated to one side of the knife's edge does. The punk fans who were already angry at Green Day for being a major label band were allergic to even more pop being in the mix, while pop fans were no longer able to feel as subversive if Green Day wasn't underground and punk. They were reaching across an aisle to two audiences that wanted nothing to do with one another.
Green Day got famous singing a song about masturbating, but they remained as stupid as ever while they improved at their craft. "Minority" might be their dumbest song ever, as Billy Joe sings about wanting to be part of the minority opinion, as if there is something to be proud of in that. The song should have been a lament about how the majority of society doesn't see things as they should be, and what a shame it is that the morally right attitudes have been shunted to the sidelines. But no, he instead sees good people being such a small fragment of the population as a good thing, and throws in a 'God is dog spelled backwards' joke for the hell of it. Green Day hadn't actually matured much.
That's lyrically. Musically, Billy Joe had developed his ear for melodies, cranking out songs that rightfully should have been hits. While "Minority" did get some play on MTV, songs like "Church On Sunday", "Deadbeat Holiday", and "Waiting" were arguably better compositions than anything you'll hear on their greatest hits album. Green Day was becoming an arena band, and they were now writing the songs suitable for those stages.
In that respect, "American Idiot" could not have existed without "Warning" as a practice run. While the hits would come on the next record, "Warning" was the blueprint for Green Day's next chapter of success. Much as it took the band time to hone their writing until "Dookie" came out (sorry for the syntax there), it took time to learn how to write songs the larger audience would want to hear.
By stripping away the vestiges of punk that remained, Green Day was able to give more space for the songs to sound authentic, even if they weren't. Ironically, when a song is screaming in your face, it's hard for most people to hear the message. By figuring out how to dial things back, Green Day was now able to put a message behind their music, to tap into the connections we make with the music we hold most dear.
Hindsight treats "American Idiot" as Green Day's masterpiece because it had a story, and it was 'political', but those threads are barely there. That record was nearly as inane and meaningless as anything that came before it, save for the bits of personal honesty Billy Joe was now comfortable including. That was the key, and I don't think he would have done so without "Warning" giving him confidence in a different way of writing songs.
"Warning" came out at a time when Green Day needed to reinvent themselves, and while the world wasn't quite ready for it, I take it as the only album where they are fully self-aware, and fully committed to being themselves. I don't think they were ever as punk as they portrayed themselves to be, and they certainly aren't the classic rock warriors they would later try to be. Green Day might have failed commercially with "Warning", but they succeeded in making an album that told us there was something there under the snark.
It wouldn't last, but for one moment in time, Green Day was a damn good band.
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