12 Greatest Hard Rock Riffs Of The 1990s

Green Day's album Dookie really was a watershed moment for pop punk. After the grunge scene had started to wane in relevancy, these three punks from California picked up the mantle with songs centered around being bored, lonely, and dripping with angst. "Longview" is a great mission statement for the record, but it does you one better by giving you two classic riffs for the price of one.

Composed while on an acid trip, Mike Dirnt's sultry bass line climbs up and down the scales, as if providing a backdrop to a dude channel surfing on his couch. The line is such a hook unto itself that Billie Joe Armstrong's guitar doesn't even come in until the chorus. But once it does, it hits you with the weight of a battering ram.

For as much as the guitars hit you, the actual approach to the chorus riff is almost indebted to swing music, with Armstrong rolling every one of his power chord stabs as if he can't be asked to hit them exactly on the beat. It might be just a bunch of power chords thrown together, but the sheer bravado put into those stabs are enough for any player to want to pick up their guitar. Whereas other bands wanted to break down barriers with their mind-melting licks, Green Day showed just how powerful simplicity could be.