Nimrod

=Nimrod (album)= From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jump to: navigation, search"Walking Alone" redirects here. For the Jay Sean song, see All or Nothing (Jay Sean album). Nimrod is the fifth studio album by the American punk rock band Green Day. It was released on October 14, 1997 through Reprise Records. The album entered the Billboard U.S. charts at #10, and achieved double platinum status, although it did not revive Green Day's sales to the level of Dookie. The album has sold 2,083,000 copies in the United States alone and over 5 million worldwide.[7] Nimrod also achieved critical respect and yielded the acoustic hit "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)".

Nimrod was reissued on vinyl on June 16, 2009.[8] The album was released in Europe as an HDCD. The songs "Nice Guys Finish Last", "Hitchin' a Ride", and "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" are featured in the video game Green Day: Rock Band. The portraits covered on the album cover are Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman. {| class="toc" id="toc"

Contents
[hide]*1 Music and lyrics
 * 2 Track listing
 * 2.1 B-sides and outtakes
 * 3 Chart positions
 * 3.1 Album
 * 4 Personnel
 * 5 References
 * }

[edit] Music and lyrics
Nimrod is more musically varied than previous Green Day albums. The album includes hardcore punk songs ("Reject", "Take Back", "Platypus (I Hate You)"), slower-paced pop punk songs ("Redundant", "Worry Rock"), ska punk ("King for a Day"), surf rock ("Last Ride In", which is an instrumental track), southern rock ("Walking Alone") and an acoustic ballad ("Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)"). Nimrod is also the first album by the band to be in standard tuning.

Billie Joe Armstrong's lyrics are slightly more sophisticated than in earlier compositions. "Hitchin' a Ride", "All the Time" and "Walking Alone" are about alcoholism. "Platypus (I Hate You)" and "Take Back" are hate songs. "King for a Day" is about a cross-dresser. "Prosthetic Head" is about Armstrong's opinions about people in Hollywood being fake. "Haushinka" was written about a girl Armstrong met on a Japanese tour.

"Reject" came from an incident where a boy received Green Day's previous album, Insomniac, for his eighth birthday from his grandma. The boy started singing Green Day's songs (with explicit lyrics), and his mother got angry and wrote a complaint letter to Armstrong; Armstrong wrote an actual letter back to her, and this song was based on his response.

"The Grouch" and "Redundant" are both about married life. In the former, Billie Joe is complaining about his family dragging him down, and the latter can be construed as an apology to his wife.

"Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" was written when Billie Joe was "breaking up with a girl that was moving to Ecuador, and [he] was trying to be as understanding about it as [he] could." Some also feel the song was written in response to the punk community's (specifically, 924 Gilman Street) rejection of Green Day after Dookie went platinum. (The story behind this song was seemingly the basis for VH1's Behind the Music episode on the band.) [9] In 1998, Green Day won a MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video for this song.[10]

[edit] Track listing
All lyrics written by Billie Joe Armstrong, all music composed by Green Day.

[edit] Personnel

 * Billie Joe Armstrong – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica on track 13
 * Mike Dirnt – bass, backing vocals, baseball bat on track 19 (Japanese version; track 21 on the Australian version)
 * Tré Cool – drums
 * Rob Cavallo; Green Day – producers
 * Petra Haden - violin on tracks 2 and 10
 * Conan McCallum – violin on track 17
 * Gabrial McNair – horn
 * David Campbell - strings arranger