Song of the Week: "Burnout"
By Aska /Dec. 13, 2011 / Comments
Song of the Week this week is the apathetic Burnout, the opening track off Green Day's major-label debut, Dookie, released in February of 1994. The inspiration for this week's SotW came from the newly uploaded Green Day interview from Italy GDA posted about last week, specifically because of Billie's great line "apathy rules - fuck everybody!".
Burnout is a simple, snotty, two-minute celebration of being an unmotivated, apathetic and bored teenager, wasting away their life without a care in the world. It sets up the mood for the entire Dookie album, (the first words on the album being "I declare I don't care no more") and really showed the newly-introduced-to-Green Day-world what the band, at the time, was all about. The thing I love about this song the most is that it's unapologetically not giving a damn about anything - it's not angry, or sad, or trying to prove any sort of point, it's simply the state of mind of a bored, directionless teenager. The song got played a decent amount of times on Green Day's most recent 21st Century Breakdown tour, and is a real treat live - Tre's drum solo is a highlight and the crowd always livens up for the old favourites. A live version recorded in Japan in 2010 was also included on the Awesome As Fuck Live DVD, released earlier in the year.
There's a plethora of live videos of Burnout out there, but I think the performance of the song at Woodstock captures the song best - the band were relatively new and unknown back when they played Woodstock '94, and the energy from the band and crowd is just great.
Lyrics and a download of the song can be found here, and this is Burnout's Song of the Week thread, where you'll find a greater song-analysis and some member-discussion. Feel free to stop by and post your opinion, or nominate next week's song.
Burnout is a simple, snotty, two-minute celebration of being an unmotivated, apathetic and bored teenager, wasting away their life without a care in the world. It sets up the mood for the entire Dookie album, (the first words on the album being "I declare I don't care no more") and really showed the newly-introduced-to-Green Day-world what the band, at the time, was all about. The thing I love about this song the most is that it's unapologetically not giving a damn about anything - it's not angry, or sad, or trying to prove any sort of point, it's simply the state of mind of a bored, directionless teenager. The song got played a decent amount of times on Green Day's most recent 21st Century Breakdown tour, and is a real treat live - Tre's drum solo is a highlight and the crowd always livens up for the old favourites. A live version recorded in Japan in 2010 was also included on the Awesome As Fuck Live DVD, released earlier in the year.
There's a plethora of live videos of Burnout out there, but I think the performance of the song at Woodstock captures the song best - the band were relatively new and unknown back when they played Woodstock '94, and the energy from the band and crowd is just great.
Lyrics and a download of the song can be found here, and this is Burnout's Song of the Week thread, where you'll find a greater song-analysis and some member-discussion. Feel free to stop by and post your opinion, or nominate next week's song.
