taking sides green day vs. blink-182

so hard but i'm going with blink

this is impossible dude

lol when i did slam "basket case" was my entrance music

on youtube there used to be video of me leading a singalong for the whole bar

Longview remains solid

"carousel" is a great song. so i'm going with blink

I've got a lot of attachment to Green Day for Dookie but I almost never put on Nimrod or Warning and god knows the only thing I ever played more than once on American Idiot was the title track.

Blink never made a record as good as Dookie but their singles were better and their highs were higher. Gotta go with the naked dudes.

blink greatest hits > green day greatest hits, but both are the only albums you'll ever need

Pretty much obviously Green Day. "Basket Case" and "Boulevard Of Broken Dreams" are both great songs.

Yeah I was trying to work out if I thought Blink Hits > Dookie but I think they're on equal footing, which is biiiiiig ups for Blink in my mind what with Dookie on the pedestal etc

jordan completely otm

box car racer

here is what i've done tonight:

drank beer while playing poker w/ best bros while listening to international superhits! and enema of the state :D

dudes, Green Day by a longview.

I WANT TO BE THE MINORITY!

Green Day were infinitely more attractive than Blink-182. so again, my vote is right.

i could live without ever hearing either one of this bands ever, again.

Green Day is the answer but ILM will probably pick the other.

my answer is guided, though, by the fact that i got into Green Day in 93, and by the time Blink-182 got big, i was listening to crust-punk and anarchist shit and couldn't be bothered. the only Blink thing i ever owned was a shoplifted cassingle of 'Small Things.'

i love both of these bands

Both have great singles and fun early albums so...

Blink's shit, last serious album with Robert Smith > Green Day's shit, last serious album with singles with U2.

Am I just paranoid, ay uh uh und

Green Day is far less annoying and far more catchy. Also, you try going to high school with people who thought Blink-182 were the wittest people on earth because did you see what they were doing there in the music video for "All The Small Things"? But they almost made you think - "Adam's Song" was like, so sad.

Give all my things to all my friends
You'll never set foot in my room again
You'll close it off, board it up
Remember the time that I spilled the cup
Of apple juice in the hall
Please tell mom this is not her fault

Oops, really needs a line break after "juice" to emphasize how badly that scans. Not a terrible song IMO, but they really should have worked that through one more time.

In general it's a tough comparison b/c there's a generational thing going on here - Blink-182 had absorbed and reprocessed those Green Day singles and were able to come out swinging with a compressed, poppier, punchier version of it. So I'll take "All the Small Things" over "Basketcase" and "Josie" over "Walking Contradiction" (maybe) - but Blink just starts running out of hits with which to compete. Burn the serious, droopy efforts from both bands ("Stay Together For The Kids" is just as godawful as "Boulevard") and Green Day still just has a more robust catalogue. All of Dookie plus selected items before and after, they've got it in the bag. I mean, "2,000 Light Years Away" - come on!

GREEN DAY SINGLES POLL
WORST Single By Green Day or the Offspring

Good discussion here

this is impossible dude

green day always remind me of my middle aged english teacher who borrowed a tape of "dookie" off my mate to listen to on a coach trip and said "they're a bit like the jam only with ruder lyrics..."

Both bands conjure up images, sounds, concepts and attitudes that seem contrived and dated in 2008.

Year of sophistication that it is

PS Green Day by a million miles

I never thought I'd see the point where the stigmas against blink182 (and GD to a lesser extent) had vanished. At least not this soon.

i love green day and only know blink's singles, so it's gd easy for me. i like all the green day albums from dookie to warning. american idiot is sort of blah, but it made them a bazillion (more) dollars, so whatever. they're one of the best live bands i've seen in the last decade or so.

(both times i saw them they did their shtick of recruiting kids out of the audience -- "ok, who can play guitar? i mean really actually play?" -- to come up and do a song. it's a hokey shtick, but really sweet too. i got the feeling that they really liked their crowds, had affection for them, more than most people.)

green day in a walk.

am i the only on who thinks Kerplunk! is way better than dookie?

also, i will rep all day for american idiot, esp. that big long mall punk "quick one while he's away" joint. that was awesome.

do love about 4 blink songs, and barker is a great drummer.

that big long mall punk "quick one while he's away" joint. that was awesome.

def. the highlight of the album.

fuck now i'm regretting my vote

don't worry hoos, green day was slated to win regardless

i just put warning on this morning and fuck its really really good

i probably wasn't ready for it at 14

wtf this is green day, who are you kids?

lol u old

what are those 4 blink songs?

the one where they are like playing in a house that's falling apart or on fire, i think it's about child abuse or something

dammit (?), the one where they are rambunctious in a movie theater

all the small things

what's my age again

also forgot "rock show" which is also awesome.

also, i saw them once at an xbox party and they were pretty fun live i thought.

dammit is great, love whats my age again too.
i still think "carousel" is their best song though

"What's My Age Again" and "All The Small Things" are really really essential listening, probably the best rock songs on the radio that year.

"Rock Show," "Josie," and "Pathetic" are pretty darn good pop-punk... not much to say about them except that they're good and kinda sweet.

"Man Overboard" starts to go off in a little more of an arena direction but basically still works. "I Miss You" (the loopy spooky one) is kind of great if read as a halfway-ironic send up of the "we have to become dark and mature" move...I mean they have the guy with the whiny voice carrying on about spiders for god's sake, and the other guy is namechecking "Nightmare Before Christmas!"

"Dammit" kinda got on my nerves after a while tbh.

This poll really needed to include Sum-41, as the flagship band of the third generation that followed a couple years in the wake of Blink. I'll rep for "In Too Deep" and "Makes No Difference!"

I was way too humourless and serious as a teenager to enjoy this shit

I feel sort of the opposite of everyone here. I didn't really mind Blink 182 so much at the time and in fact liked singles but going back and watching them on Youtube I am completely embarrassed. They just look like frat dudes making annoying songs when they set their red cups down. They're really catchy but I don't really feel pumped about them or want to dance or bang my head to them. All I can do is quietly acknowledge their catchiness. Green Day on the other hand still totally hold up. That Jam comparison someone made earlier was dead on.

I was way too humourless and serious as a teenager to enjoy this shit

― I know, right?, Monday, November 17, 2008 1:35 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah that's why instinct said Green Day but then I went back and listened to all those early Blink singles (and the humorless and serious last Blink album, which I predictably loved at the time) and realized how great they were to begin with.

also, that singing these bands do, does it have a name? Blink 182 had that miss you song and the first guy sings and its bland but its find and then the second guy comes in and its really really horrible.

They just look like frat dudes making annoying songs when they set their red cups down.

I'm taking that "red cups" line from you.

Don’t sing with a fake British accent.

second guy comes in and its really really horrible

it's so much fun to make fun of this verse

it's also pretty great though

define great

i don't mind that it's whiny and bratty. it's obviously overdone cuz it's blink-182 and that's why we love them

Where are you and I'm so sorry
I cannot sleep I cannot dream tonight
I need somebody and always
This sick strange darkness comes creeping on so haunting everytime
And as I stared I counted the webs from all the spiders
catching things and eating their insides
Like indecision to call you
And hear your voice of treason
Will you come home and stop this pain tonight
stop this pain tonight

catching things and eating their insides
Like indecision to call you
And hear your voice of treason

^^^^^^^^^ this is hilarious

And hear your voice of treason

this line is immortal

Will you come home and stop this palin tonight
stop this palin tonight

I'll be fuckin' and suckin' and touchin'
Fuckin' and suckin' and touchin'
Fuckin' and suckin' and touchin'

Fuckin' and suckin' and touchin'
Fuckin' and suckin' and touchin'
Fuckin' and suckin' and touchin'

It's mother's day
It's mother's day
It's mother's day
It's mother's day

sort of on the same train (i was reminded by someone's mention of each band's videos), my ex is the little boy who grows horns in this video.

terrible song and strange video, but that is sort of where Blink and Green Day led.

fake british accents are fucking crewsh!

the best part is definitely "This sick strange darkness."

DUNT WAYST YR TIME ON MEEE YORE AWL-READ-YY the VOYYCE in-SIDE MOY 'EEDDD

blolnk-182

Blink's last couple singles after "Miss You" were so so good and slept on, it's a shame Mr. Moy Yed had to run off and do that horrible Angels & Airwaves shit:

the only song you need from this movement:

its a movement baby

it's punk

You'll close it off, board it up
Remember the time that I spilled the cup
Of apple juice in the hall
Please tell mom this is not her fault

(i voted for green day.)

green day for dookie but blink for 'all the small things'

ALWAYS
I KNOW
YOU'LL BE
AT MY SHOW

WATCHING
WAITING
COMMIS-
ERATING

THEY FELL SHORT THIS TIME
SMILE FADES IN THE SUMMER
PLACE YOUR HAND IN MINE
I'LL LEAVE WHEN I WANNA

"Fat Lip" rocks just fine but the chorus always got on my nerves, same kind of thin anti-establishmentism as Green Day's "Minority" actually. Yeah - "Too Deep" is much much better. Their lead guitarist and drummer made the whole rest of the movement look like chumps.

Always felt like the lead guy just had to be the son of Mickey Dolenz.

blink 182

Solo @ 1:50 or so, then the way the drums come in just after around 2:25 - maybe a kind of cheap trick but it sounds fucking awesome. There's a lot to love in this song.

yeah Sum 41 seemed to have a lot of potential in those first 2 singles that they never really showed again.

Sum 41 can't really make such a claim to this 'movement" because 1) they never made anything nearly as a good as Green Day or Blink 182, and 2) both bands totally ran out of steam by 2000; Green Day after Insomniac.
They set the stage for the really shitty bands like Sum 41 to build a career.

my favorite green day album is actually nimrod. not because of "good riddance" (even though i like it fine), i think it's just their strongest in terms of back-to-back-to-back tunes.

i also think it's interesting how green day has had 3 separate peaks that add up to a sustained career. dookie the first one, obviously, but then insomniac didn't do a whole lot and they seemed maybe like a one-album wonder; but then you somewhat unexpectedly get the big prom-theme ballad; then another mini-fade with warning; then the also somewhat unexpected post-9/11 reinvention as a quasi-socially-conscious pop-punk u2. for a band whose songs all "sound the same," they've had an interesting meander.

I was way too humourless and serious as a teenager to enjoy this shit

OTM - I only saw Green Day live, and it was because Jawbox was the opening band and I was excited to be seeing them play away from home during my first year of college. (In fairness, Green Day put on a great show). I think I would vote against Blink 182 in most conceiveable "vs." polls, though.

Sum 41 can't really make such a claim to this 'movement"

I was thinking of the "movement" here the 2000s pop-punk wave, as something distinct from the Green Day era and even from Blink-182 (who ushered it in but were always kind of a band apart from the ones who took over the rock airwaves from nu-metal).

Blink started as a band in like 92, 93, (when Kerplunk was already in circulation) and had their first radio success with "Dammit" in 1998. So Sum-41 was gigging around in the Blink-182 era and got signed in '99; their peer group includes Bowling For Soup, Good Charlotte, etc,. not the Offspring and Goldfinger. And among those early 00s pop-punk bands, I'd say they're probably the best - agreed that the later singles don't really live up to it though. (But this was a problem for the genre in general - see also Avril's string of singles post-"Sk8er Boi.")

Average birth years of members of these bands:

Green Day: 1972 (72, 72, 72)
Blink: 1975 (72, 75, 78, 72)
Sum-41: 1980.5 (80, 80, 81, 80)

I--and many of my friends--got into these bands at the same time:
Blink 182
New Found Glory
Sum 41
Bowling for Soup
Lit
Eve 6
The Ataris

Huh, that's interesting - I really think of Lit and Eve-6 as a 1998-era thing, much more late alterna-rock than anything else...but didn't Eve-6 also have a big hit later on? Hmm.

You're right about Lit. I just stumbled on the album circa 2002.

am i the only on who thinks Kerplunk! is way better than dookie?

"fat lip" and "in too deep" stand-up w/ the best of blink and green day (maybe even better on some days) but they obv don't have nearly as many good singles as blink or green day. also, when sum 41 tried to do more "mature" stuff it was all really terrible, whereas lots of the darker blink singles at the end of their career are pretty great and fuck it i'll stand up for american idiot era green day too

haha I remember Sum's big power ballad being a note-for-note rewrite of Coldplay's "The Scientist"

alex otm about "down" and "always", esp "down" which is one of my 3 or 4 favorite blink songs ever

haha yeah

"fat lip" and "in too deep" stand-up w/ the best of blink and green day (maybe even better on some days)

no

dunno. i prefer what green day have to say/represent, but blink are a lot more fun and have better haircuts.

is anyone here thinking of green day in the context of operation ivy, et al?

i mean, they did come out of the same scene/club/time

not sure of blink's pre-fame history, but i imagine it's in the wake of this

blink was a totally different time from green day, i dont see why people keep calling it the same 'wave' or whatever

no

yes

94-Present is totally different from 96-04

i was like 10 when dookie came out and i was in high school when blink 182 were biggest. in teenager terms thats a huge gap of interest

yeah actually pappa brings up a good point...Green Day is a Gilman St. band right? that's their scene.

Green Day's first indie album: 1990
Green Day's first major label album and radio hit: 1994
Blink's first indie album: 1994
Blink's first major label album and radio hit: 1997

although Blink didn't really reach a level of popularity comparable to GD until 1999

i was like 10 when dookie came out and i was in high school when blink 182 were biggest. in teenager terms thats a huge gap of interest

key phrase: teenager terms

who do you think is listening to these records other than gabbneb, gabbneb?

haha i forgot about the "jello biafra" incident at gilman st. until i was just looking at wikipedia...."HE'S A SELLOUT KICK HIM!"

actually now there's no way you could convince me that green day and blink are from the same scene or movement or whatever....green day came out of a pretty legendary underground scene in the bay area of the time.

The age comparisons are misleading. Green Day were super young when they started. Their first EPs came out in the late '80s (around the same time as Bleach, interestingly enough). They were, indeed, part of the Gilman/East Bay scene: Op Ivy, Crimpshrine (later Fifteen), Screeching Weasel, The Mr. T Experience, etc. When I was listening to pop punk (90-93) Blink 182 were never talked about.

I should add: Green Day were a big deal on a national (albeit indie) level long before Dookie. I grew up in Syracuse, NY, and all the little punkers loved them.

as someone interested in place < / paglia >, i think their particular roots are interesting, but more broadly speaking, these are two bands from roughly the same timeframe with a fairly similar sound and content

well yeah "roughly" you could say anything. you could say the Beatles and the Led Zeppelin are contemporaries if you wanted to.

i remember seeing boris the sprinkler play dressed up as the X-Men.

no, not in the same way. blink arguably overlaps 80% of green day's career, while Zep overlaps 25% of the Beatles, xp

gabbneb? are you british or american? (not starting a fight, but like these distinction will mean more to us american dudes of a certain age i think)...it would be like saying "Oh the Smiths and the Stone Roses are pretty much from the same scene"...sorta

i'm American

hmm...cuz yeah to me they seemed like they were totally different scenes, but maybe that's just me...maybe a better example would be saying that nirvana and stone temple pilots were from the same scene.

according to wiki:

green day formed in 1987
blink 182 formed in 1992

that's a "long" five years in US rock culture terms, IMO.

the mass public learned who green day were in 94, and who blink were in 96.

i don't care about "scene" at all

i don't like either one of these bands but i dislike green day less. can't stand the vocal style of either.

The scene-specific differences have carried over into the pop realm. Blink 182 puts a porn star on an album cover, while Green Day releases American Idiot. That right there, explains a lot.

i guess i should disclose that the vh1 green day driven was developed/researched/co-wrote by me, so i kinda have some extra insight on the green day side of this

dealing with gilman st. alumni was weird as some would not even take your phone call (I made it a point not to say i rep'd vh1 until well into the conversation, but they wanted to deal with no one from outside their scene), yet, other old punks had really outgrown it and were very accepting (especially Larry Livermore)

anyway, QuantumNoise made an excellent point about green day's national underground appreciation in the late 80s. billie joe's wife came as a result of that when they played minnesota at that time.

Yeah, my point with the age comparisons was to show that GD, Blink, and S41 were all different scenes! Sorry if it came out otherwise. Even without knowing the backstory of where they were gigging as unknowns, I really understood them as different things as an alt-rock radio listener - Green Day went with Offspring, Blink with Goldfinger, and Sum-41 with New Found Glory et al. There's a five-year-or-so gap on each of those, and indeed they are long five years both in teenager terms and rock n roll scene terms. I mean 1994 versus 1999 is as huge a difference as 1994 vs 1989 or whatever.

xpost - also has to do with the red cup issue identified earlier...not sure if it's specific to the dudes in Blink-182 but it might be. I mean it's clear that Blink-182 was listening to Green Day coming up - what was Green Day listening to?

In general, Green Day is by far the most successful of any band mentioned on this thread in terms of trying to do something different with their sound. I had no interest in American Idiot but it clearly clicked in a way that the "mature" records from the other bands didn't. And even much earlier than that - "Time Of Your Life," yes, but also "Hitchin' A Ride," "Warning" and even "Brain Stew" don't sound a thing like the songs that put these guys on the map.

DI HERE makes an interesting point - did any of the star 00s pop-punk bands put in serious time in the trenches, or did they all get instantly signed and promoted (presumably by labels looking at the success of Blink-182)?

Sum 41's "Makes No Difference" was from an EP with crappy cover art that predated the big hit album, but I remember it being on MTV2, etc.

Yeah, my point with the age comparisons was to show that GD, Blink, and S41 were all different scenes!

Sorry. We're in agreement then!

Green Day coming up - what was Green Day listening to?

The Replacements, according to my interviews.

Part of their decision to accept their major label deal with Reprise.

but gabbneb, even forgetting the underground origins if yr just talking about mainstream pop success, green day was the first big populist movement wave blueprint and blink 182 copied that blueprint nationally ... in 1999. nothing they did was 'dookie' level popular until 'enema'

true, i misread some stats about blink's 96 sales. dude ranch did go gold in '98 (after a '97 major release following a '96 one?), in about twice the time it took dookie. but dookie's meteoric rise might be explained in significant part by their playing woodstock '94 - it went platinum immediately following the weekend. blink had no comparable event, and, while enema initially sold faster than dookie, it's only sold half what dookie has to date.

it wasn't just Woodstock, Blink were a one-hit-wonder until Enema in '99 whereas Green Day got a whole lot of hits in a row off of Dookie.

that's why i said in part

they also opened the main stage for half of lollapalooza 94

and they got those plum touring gigs because they were a big breakthrough band with multiple radio hits by that point.

Anyone else notice we're comparing Dookie to Enema without a trace of irony?

You guys have inspired to spin Kerplunk!, which I haven't since high school. It's just a super good pop albums filled with great tunes and hooks and ENERGY.

As for the issue of content mentioned above. This is how I see it.

Green Day: classic teen angst, genuinely fretting about self, as well as the world around them.
Blink 182: apolitical pranksters who eat pizza play videos games all day long. they're fine so long as they have both these things.

no, they only had one big single - Longview hit #1 on June 11. Basket Case didn't get there until after Woodstock

Maybe there's a bit of SoCal vs. NorCal going on here.

Anyone else notice we're comparing Dookie to Enema without a trace of irony?

Fred Durst

they certainly aren't of the same time period nor do i think that they are contemporaries cuz w/o green day there's no way blink-182 exists in the same way that they do now

but i didn't start this thread because of time periods or anything like that. they're just two bands that i really loved in middle school and still love now

i remember seeing an old pre-fame Blink video on 120 Minutes that sounded like pop-punk Morrissey

How did "Welcome to Paradise" do as a single on initial release? We're getting down to minutia here, I realize - I'm just curious.

QN: Agreed about apolitical pranksters...but I think you may be giving Green Day a little much credit. There's some allusion to the problems outside oneself (the run-down neighborhood in "Welcome to Paradise," the vague empathy of "She"), but I'm not really sure that Dookie-era Green Day were as involved in the world around them as, say, Smash-era Offspring, who actually were talking about the environment and stuff.

Agreed. Green Day didn't become overtly political until American Idiot, really. However, I do hear much more angst in them than I do Blink. And that angst is definitely a product that East Bay scene, which was always tagged as a tad too serious and all too self-righteous.

More angst for sure - it's all over that record. Would also call that a zeitgeist thing, at least a little bit - I mean the early 90s versus the mid-to-late 90s in America, in pop, etc...

i just noticed that rancid hasn't been mentioned in this thread. now they have been.

x-post

And there's some personal history there, too.

Billie Joe wasn't an Orange County-type punk. He had a fairly sketchy childhood.

Warning was not an apolitical record. And blink isn't completely apolitical, either.

rancid would be the apt contemporaries of green day (the deadly serious side the of the coin though).

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

These aren't really bands I expect to hear talked about on ILM, just sayin.

and youve been here how long

2yrs?

It is like when you realise that two of your friends that you never think of as having anything to do with each other are actually really good friends or related or something and its surprising first but then it isn't

Dookie is still my favorite album of 1994, which is my favorite music year.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow

u_u

v successful poll though!

indicative of early 90s--late 90s adolescence generation gap or just that lurkers love green day?

don't worry hoos, green day was slated to win regardless

― I'M JUGGLING MY BALLS HERE (PappaWheelie V), Sunday, November 16, 2008 5:29 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

x-joke

ya i was super torn throughout this process boss

I do think this...

indicative of early 90s--late 90s adolescence generation gap

...but I tend to focus too much on that sometimes.

indicative of early 90s--late 90s adolescence generation gap or just that lurkers love green day?

― BIG HOOS enjoys a cold mindbeer (BIG HOOS aka the steendriver), Thursday, November 20, 2008 6:03 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

probably

i mean im sure lots of the blink votes were Yung ILXors

yeah exactly

Advice to Blink 182 fans: don't be lonely now, and dry your crying eyes

Advice to Green Day fans: don't waste your time on me, you're already the voice inside moy yed.

Honestly, the Blink greatest hits doesn't look too bad, from the tracklist - it just has a few too many songs I don't happen to know. A disc comprised of Josie, Dammit, What's My Age Again, All The Small Things, Adam's Song, Man Overboard, The Rock Show, and I Miss You would be just about perfect although obviously a bit short. Couldn't do a better job of capturing that late-90s, early-2000s period where it wasn't really cool to like Blink-182, but they just kept putting out shit I liked. None of them are really all-time classics (although they've ended up on some year-end best-of lists) except maybe All The Small Things....but they're all basically enjoyable. I will say that "Man Overboard" is tremendously improved if you sing most of the lyrics as "Hello Major Tom / I'm not responding / turn your switches on / Not responding." I can't explain HOW or WHY my old roommate and I hit on that one, but it works.

― Doctor Casino, Thursday, November 3, 2005 7:30 PM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I still stand by all of this, I think. I really wish they would have taken up my Peter Schilling cover idea.

Dookie is still my favorite album of 1994, which is my favorite music year.

― billstevejim, Wednesday, November 19, 2008 9:12 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

agreed on 94 being the year a lot of really great, now classic, records were released. agree to disagree on Dookie being among them.

i know that everything
i know that everything
i know that everything
everything's gonna be fine

Indicative that at one stage Green Day were kinda, sorta alright, whilst Blink 182 were arguably the culpable ones for ushering in a wave of 5th rate pop-punk bands.

well i guess this is growing up

i don't think i mentioned in here the large amount of great melodic bridges that blink has

"Adam's Song"

box car racer

― Tape Store, Sunday, November 16, 2008 6:24 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

guys blink have plenty of good songs but "carousel" will always be their best

INSOMNIAC is their best

i don't think i mentioned in here the large amount of great melodic bridges that blink has

"it's the slow pretty part"

i'm no green day hater, but

i remember listening to radio DJs playing blink182 and saying,
"This song was from their jawbreaker period, now let's listen to something by them that's more green day"

I pretty much have disdain for Blink's entire catalog, but even with that said, I enjoy most of what Green Day has done, pretty much from Kerplunk through American Idiot (though I should be clear that I only like about 65-70% of that album). Hated the one after it, haven't heard "Unos"/"Dos"/"Tres".

But they had a solid run for a while there. It's just a shame Billie Joe is such a toolbag.

always thought it was interesting how BJA almost never played lead, it's all power chords, but the hooks in blink songs are arpeggios or riffs. obviously they're both (BJA & Hoppus/DeLonge) some of the best vocal melody writers of the last 30 years.