While their other chart-straddling hit Basket Case had forced them into a restrictive pigeonhole, this latest smash actually broadened their horizons, suggesting through its commercial success that the public were ready to accept new directions from the band. While Good Riddance was the final straw for many punk purists, it also announced the beginning of Green Day’s metamorphosis from punk brats into a genuinely interesting band. The record-buying public continued to scoop up copies of the single by the armful, fooled by the lilting string sections, thinking it was a song of chest-beating triumph. The concept that he was ‘saved’ by punk from a life of menial labour is a subject that Armstrong has touched upon in several interviews, it’s not hard to see this as a tribute to the ones he left behind. So I named it ‘Good Riddance’ just to express my anger.”Īrmstrong’s lyrics in conjunction with Mark Kohr’s 1997 video (depicting a tattoo youth delivering parcels and a goth dolefully washing windows) lends further weight to the theory that Good Riddance is also an ode to missed opportunities and wasted lives. “In the song, I tried to be level-headed about her leaving, even though I was completely pissed off. “It’s about an ex-girlfriend who had moved to Ecuador,” the singer told Guitar World. In fact, the song was a bitter rebuke to a former lover. The fact that radio broadcasters routinely referred to it as Time Of Your Life – as opposed to Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) – gave listeners the mistaken impression that Armstrong’s lyric was a cosy reflection on past glories. Good Riddance sounded like a positive ditty, but it wasn’t. Even Glen Campbell recorded a cover version for his 2008 album, Meet Glen Campbell. It was played over montages during the PGA golf tour and the World Cup that year, and turned up and more weddings, funerals and graduation ceremonies than almost anything else. Tabs plus good riddance series#Good Riddance not only soundtracked the death of a cancer patient in ER (“I heard it was going to be on,” recalled Armstrong, “but I kinda purposefully didn’t watch it”) but also appeared on a series highlights episode of Seinfeld when it ended in 1998. Tabs plus good riddance tv#Where Green Day tunes had previously been either too smutty or too steeped in distortion to be shortlisted by ad agencies, now the band found their new single being played everywhere from TV shows to baseball games. It was around this time that Good Riddance turned from a song into an phenomenon.
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