This year, it will be three full decades since Green Day released their debut album 39/Smooth and began a journey that would change the face of punk forever. Dropping a further 12 LPs since, they mightn’t quite be the genre’s most prolific players but their ability to change the conversation and propel forward their own narrative with each new record is unrivalled. A rollercoaster of towering peaks and, er, even higher ones, trying to boil that journey down to just 20 songs feels utterly futile. For every pick that’s made our list, there are at least two others demanding attention. Hell, there are four albums that we’ve not touched on, and not one of them belongs on the scrapheap. Rather than cracking up, it’s best to appreciate these problems as symptomatic of just how brilliant the ...
