The title of the song might be referring to the narrator's opinion that we often live life without thinking about our future, we "hide away from hopes behind a smile and smoking dope" - we act like we are not human, but only resemble humans, while inside we are a lot more like robots that have no real plans or ambitions, and hence no future. When it’s all said and done, Green Day could very well be the most important punk band of all time. While they weren’t around during the genre’s explosion in the late 1970s and were just ahead of the hardcore underground scene of the 1980s, Green Day was the key band in keeping punk in the public eye while grunge, hip-hop, R&B, and adult contemporary took over the 1990s.

Android was named after (producer) Andy Ernst. It was about a homeless man walking down college ave. I was drinking coffee with Tre. Spitz, Marc (2006). Nobody Likes You: Inside the Turbulent Life, Times, and Music of Green Day. ISBN 9781401302740. Christgau, Robert (2000-10-15). Christgau's Consumer Guide: Albums of the '90s. Macmillan Publishing. p.123. ISBN 9780312245603. Jenkins, Craig (April 22, 2021). "The Best and Most Misunderstood of Green Day, According to Billie Joe Armstrong". Vulture . Retrieved April 28, 2022. Greatest Pop Punk Albums". Rolling Stone. 15 November 2017. Archived from the original on 8 October 2019 . Retrieved 8 October 2019.That’s another part of the story that’s worth talking about: Kerplunk sold 50,000 copies by the end of 1992, making it by far the biggest release Lookout! Records had ever produced. Despite including a letter of loyalty to Lookout on their debut 39/Smooth, the band released they had hit a ceiling with the independent label. Upon their signing to Reprise Records, Green Day were excommunicated from their roots: barred from Gillman, shunned by hometown friends, and viciously insulted in fan zines proclaiming them as the worst thing a ’90s band could be – sell outs. The song was inspired by Armstrong's relationship with Adrienne Nesser, his future wife, who at that time lived in Minnesota, while he lived in California. Obviously, being so far away from her made him miss her a lot, and 2,000 Light Years Away is one of the songs that he wrote to express his feelings towards her. The number 2,000 is probably based on the actual distance between the lovers (it's also mentioned in another song about Armstrong's wife - Westbound Sign: "is tragedy 2,000 miles away?") - the actual location between their hometowns is a lot less than 2,000 miles*, but the author roughly approximated the distance because obviously, when you are apart from someone you love, it seems like they are worlds away, even if it's just a few hundred miles. The interlude comes in with the author admitting he actually likes feeling love despite the pain he gets since its been so long already ( I do not mind if this goes on, Cause now it seems I'm too far gone). The song ends by stating how the two end up as a couple ( 80 please keep taking me away).

AllMusic regards Kerplunk as the "perfect dry run" for the band's later mainstream appeal, saying it contains "both more variety and more flat-out smashes than previous releases had shown." [15] Pitchfork Media states "All in all, it's a magnitude better than its predecessor and only a hair behind the follow up." [6]We really wanted to make our records sound like us, but a bigger version of it,” Armstrong said in 2006. “We’d seen what had happened to so many other bands before. Throughout the Eighties, if a punk band signed to a major label, it always seemed like they compromised their sound, and we didn’t want to do that”. Words I Might Have Ate was about Nina. She broke my heart. I was a shitty boyfriend. The 'school grounds' was a school we hung out at and smoked weed and made out and stuff. Oh to be young."

The song is filled with the spirit of the album expressing the difficulties of realizations of one's mistakes and self-deception. The narrator takes the blame for his actions and admits everything he's done wrong - but he can't change anything, and once again he's left without an answer to the one question that keeps dwelling in his mind: "Why?"Ranking: Every Green Day Album from Worst to Best". Consequence of Sound. 2016-10-07. Archived from the original on 2017-12-16 . Retrieved 2017-07-13. In this song, the narrator is admitting the mistakes he's made in a relationship with someone he really loved. He confesses that this was "something real" that he could have had, but he lost it and it was solely his own fault. He has the best memories about the girl he loved and he regrets that he didn't try hard enough to keep what they had together, but now it's too late and all he can do is "take the pain". Hours, 1990’s Slappy EP, and 1991’s 39/Smooth LP were bundled together on CD as (duh) 1991’s 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours. It’s raw stuff, but even at this point Green Day’s records were at least halfway decently recorded, unlike most of their peers’ tin-can-and-twine set-ups. And songs like “At the Library” were downright hummable, always important when you’re trying to make pop music—especially out of only a few chords in a formally restrictive setting. Of course, on a label that at the time included household names Plaid Retina and Sewer Trout, early Green Day were bound to shine, but if they had broken up after 1,039, they’d be remembered—if at all—as perhaps the slightly less emo cousin to early Jawbreaker, or maybe the musically less accomplished Crimpshrine.

All these realizations lead the narrator to another serious question, and that is whether there is a God, whether there is someone or something that actually knows the answers to eternal questions. Like so many others he was praying at night because he'd been told that this was the right thing to do. Now he's reached the time when he starts questioning whether he believes in that himself - so far he has no answers. And he's wondering if he's just been lying to himself all along. Larkin, Colin (2011). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th conciseed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 978-0-85712-595-8. First came the name change: Green Day. Then came their nearly weekly shows at 924 Gillman Street, the straight edge all ages refuge that birthed influential acts like The Lookouts and Operation Ivy. Green Day even managed to swipe The Lookouts drummer, an excitable and unpredictable ball of energy who went by the name Tre Cool. By the time they stumbled into the Art of Ears studio in San Francisco to record their second full length on Lookout! Records, they had a (slightly) increased budget, a solid year of touring behind them, and a whole slate of new songs written by lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong.The narrator in this song expresses his fear of growing up and turning into someone who has to plan out everything they do. He sees that his friends are ageing and realizes that this will inevitably happen to him too. He doesn't express a certain opinion - he simply looks at both sides of the problem and tries to figure out what to do. He's saying that he doesn't want to live a planned out life, but wants to stay spontaneous and have fun for as long as he can. Yet, he's saying that sometimes he unintentionally hurts people with who he is, and that makes him wonder whether he should somehow change, have a plan for life, grow up. He's wondering whether what he's doing with his life is right. a b Raggett, Ned. " Kerplunk! Review". AllMusic. Rovi. Archived from the original on March 14, 2011 . Retrieved June 19, 2011. Christie Rd is off Hwy 4 between our hometown Rodeo and Martinez, CA. My brother hung out there first. Then my friends hung out there too." Revisiting the band’s attitude towards their craft as young upstarts, he added: “But when it came to music, they were Very Serious Indeed. I was working with a lot of young bands in those days, and one thing I constantly struggled with was getting musicians to strike the right balance between having fun and making the most of their musical abilities. Krovatin, Chris. "Green Day's Kerplunk! Is An Unspoiled '90s Punk Gem". Kerrang! . Retrieved August 15, 2021.