Twenty years ago, Green Day released their first greatest hits album, International Superhits!.
The choice to release a hits album so early might seem strange to anyone looking retroactively at the careers of the Oakland based rockers, especially with their greatest chart success American Idiot still three years from being released at the time that International Superhits! hit the airwaves.
International Superhits! was released during a career lull. Green Day was struggling to fill venues they had previously packed out, and Warning, their 2000 release, while having a unique sound, deviated from their earlier and edgier albums, had not enjoyed the same commercial success as Dookie and their other earlier albums.
International Superhits! included many tracks that were at the time, highlights of the band’s career, but would now not be widely known by a listening audience such as “J.A.R.”, and “Stuck With Me”, as well as two singles exclusive to the album, “Maria”, and “Poprocks and Coke”.
The whole compilation album doesn’t just focus on the band’s chart toppers up to that point. The focus and feel of the record seems to aim to capture Green Day’s coming of age soft punk vibe. “Minority” being the classic ‘I won’t do what you want’ punk anthem, and “Redundant” showing the helpless and vulnerable side of the punk rockers. It’s sweet but it’s edgy, a trademark that’s become typical and familiar of all of frontman Billie Joe Armstrong’s lyrics, and honestly, it feels like a swan song. Listening through, you can almost feel that they thought this was it. This album was their youth, and they were saying goodbye.
This album was my youth, too. International Superhits! was the first or second piece of music media that I actually owned (the other being Dookie on cassette), a gift from my mother. I was, I think, in second grade when it came into my possession. I wore that thing out. It was one of those albums I could listen to all the way down, over and over and over again. It’s the album that made me want to play guitar. And yes, it was a greatest hits record. But it was the essence of Green Day up to that point.
As the band followed up International Superhits! with Shenanigans, an album of b-sides and rarities, in 2002, speculation that the band was finished making new music began to swirl around the punk and rock communities.
Then, their Phoenix flame and rebirth: American Idiot.
Three short years after releasing their (first) greatest hits album, Green Day would completely reinvent their sound, and enjoy more success than they ever had previously. Released in the midst of a Bush era war torn America, American Idiot was a dissenting voice in a sea of pro-American patriotism in art and music. It was loud, it was angry, it was raw, and it was divisive. And it was wildly popular.
Green Day continues to enjoy cultural relevance to date, with a new album (Father of All Motherfuckers), a supposed secret side project (see The Network), and a world tour with Weezer and Fall Out Boy they recently embarked on. Twenty years post their first hits album, Green Day continues to create hits, and International Superhits! remains a timeless and relevant punk rock classic.