10 Rock Music Albums No One Understood At First
5. Warning - Green Day
One of the biggest problems with being a pop punk band in the early years of the genre is eventually having to grow up. Just when Green Day started to look like one of the biggest bands in the world in the wake of Dookie, the next few years saw them treading water with both the fans and the critics, with gems like Nimrod and Insomniac never really reaching the same magic as a Basket Case or Welcome to Paradise. Just before they reinvented themselves as storytellers on American Idiot though, fans had really started to question what they were doing on Warning.
As much as the idea of folk rock doesn't feel like it belongs in the same area as Green Day most of the time, this is probably one of the most organic records they have ever made, breaking out the acoustic guitars and Billie Joe Armstrong writing more from the heart about hollow living on songs like Macy's Day Parade and Fashion Victim. Whereas the first handful of Green Day records had their roots in people like The Jam and The Ramones, this feels more in tune with the sounds of people like Tom Petty and even the Kinks, as Billie looks out at an America that seems to be slipping away.
This album should really be credited for its lyrics though, with songs like Minority being the first few times where Billie tried to write something deliberately political and coming out with a classic. Some of the staples of this album may just feel like stop gaps for the band, but the band needed to have songs like Minority under the belt before they even tried to write something like Holiday or American Idiot.