10 Rock Songs That Waited Years Before Being Released

There has been the age old question that has gone around elitists circles for years at this point: do Green Day even qualify as punk? For all of their credentials in the Gilman Street scene, there are still tons of fans that take to calling them sellouts for what they see as them turning their back on their community. Green Day were always about the songs though, and Billie Joe Armstrong kept one on the backburner until it was just right.

And you can’t really blame him, with the future graduation staple Good Riddance being written in the early ‘90s, somewhere after the making of Kerplunk and before production would start on Dookie. Then again, you can see why Billie would be wary about releasing this kind of song in between those records, knowing that it would alienate the audience that had already become suspicious of the band’s poppier leanings.

During the making of Nimrod though, the guys were already knee deep in some experimental projects, so it made sense to tack this song on towards the end, making for a jaded love song that sounds like nostalgia from the moment it gets started. Most of the punk elitists can cry and moan all they want, but the fact that Green Day had the guts to put this song on an album after all that lambasting was probably the most punk thing they could have done.