About Insomniac album

7:09 PM |

Dookie gave Green Day success, but it was never really clear whether they wanted it in the first place. However, given the incessantly catchy songwriting of Billie Joe, the success made sense. Green Day were traditionalists without realizing it, learning all of their tricks through secondhand records and second-generation California punk bands. They didn't change their sound in the slightest after signing to a major label, which meant that they couldn't revert back to a harsher, earlier sound as a way to shed their audience for Dookie's follow-up, Insomniac.

Throughout Insomniac, there are vague references to the band's startling multi-platinum breakthrough, but the album is hardly a stark confessional on the level of Nirvana's In Utero. It's a collection of speedy, catchy songs in the spirit of the Buzzcocks, the Jam, the Clash, and the Undertones, but played with more minor chords and less melody and recorded with a bigger, hard rock-oriented production. While nothing on the album is as immediate as "Basket Case" or "Longview," the band has gained a powerful sonic punch, which goes straight for the gut but sacrifices the raw edge they so desperately want to keep and makes the record slightly tame.

Billie Joe hasn't lost much of his talent for simple, tuneful hooks, but after a series of songs that all sound pretty much the same, it becomes clear that he needs to push himself a little bit more if Green Day ever want to be something more than a good punk-pop band. As it is, they remain a good punk-pop band, and Insomniac is a good punk-pop record, but nothing more.

Insomniac is the fourth studio album by the American punk rock band Green Day. It was released on October 10, 1995 through Reprise Records. Though it peaked at number two in the United States and went double-platinum (according to the RIAA) by 1996, Insomniac did not have the sales endurance of its predecessor, Dookie, largely due to its slightly darker lyrical tone and heavier, more abrasive sound. Insomniac is the band's third-best selling album behind Dookie and American Idiot with sales at over 8 million worldwide and 2,076,000 copies in the US alone.The album was reissued on vinyl on May 12, 2009.