Green Day are one of my favourite bands of all time, but with 14 albums under their belt I’m happy (and perhaps slightly embarrassed) to admit that I didn’t know nearly as much of their discography as I thought I did when I decided to do this article. I’ve spent the majority of January listening to Green Day’s back-catalogue as much as possible, including their recently-released album Saviors, and it’s honestly been so much fun. With so many albums there are bound to be a lot of people that disagree with my ranking, so please feel free to leave a comment at the end if you do!

14. Father of All Motherf***ers (2020)

I imagine you’ll be hard pressed to find Father of All anywhere other than rock bottom in other Green Day discography rankings. To set the record straight…this album in my opinion this isn’t a terrible album, it’s just not a very good one either and something had to be ranked last. With 2020’s Father of All Motherfuckers, Green Day come across like they’re navigating their way through a bit of an identity crisis. Some of the tracks on the album, most notably the singles, veer towards happy-clappy pop and the result is disappointingly unoriginal and bland. Nothing to write home about on this album and unfortunately largely forgettable.

13. Dos (2012)

Before working on this article I’d always had in my mind that the trilogy got progressively worse with each album. Tre took me by surprise though, which sadly leaves Dos at the end of the trilogy pecking order and the second lowest album on the entire list. The trilogy as a collection could have easily been condensed into one album, and whilst I appreciate the ambition, I’m afraid that what we’re left with when it comes to Dos is a string of generic songs that plod along with no purpose.

12. Uno (2012)

Uno starts off fairly strong with Nuclear Family and Stay The Night, but it gets more dull as the album goes on and each song starts to sound just like a slight variation of the previous one. The exceptions to this are Kill The DJ, which for Green Day is a pretty ‘out there’ track and was quite divisive within the Green Day community when it was released (and maybe still is?), and the final track Oh Love. Uno is a fun record but the exhaustion of writing, recording and releasing three full-length LPs at the same time shines through across all three records.

11. Tre (2012)

Tre is my favourite of the trilogy, which perhaps isn’t saying much, and I hold my hands up to unfairly judging it up until now. By the time Tre was released though I’m sure most people were a bit bored and disengaged with the trilogy concept, and this album probably didn’t get much of a look-in from fans (no Green Day album has charted lower than Tre, except for the first two albums which didn’t chart at all). That aside, I appreciate the diversity of this album, at least compared to Uno and Dos, and some of the tracks have an interesting sixties tinge to them. Tre also has the catchiest song, and my favourite song, from the entire trilogy – 99 Revolutions.

10. Kerplunk (1992)

Whilst still clearly finding their feet at this point in their career, Kerplunk is evidence that Green Day were on the right track and it’s peppered with hints of the Dookie sound (there is actually an early version of Welcome to Paradise on here). Kerplunk is not too dissimilar to 39/Smooth and it was hard to choose between the two, but overall Kerplunk is a fun listen and it’s nice to hear Green Day before their music became a bit more polished.

9. 39/Smooth (1990)

A strong debut from the East Bay punks and an album that’s responsible for producing one of the greatest Green Day songs of all time in Going to Pasalacqua. The drumming lets this album down slightly and I’m thankful for Tre being brought into the frame after this album, but the songs are still catchy and there’s clearly a lot of promise throughout.

8. 21st Century Breakdown (2009)

Following American Idiot was always going to be an incredibly difficult feat, but to follow up with another rock opera was quite possibly a failure waiting to happen. I can understand the logic in trying to replicate something that proved to be incredibly successful, but this time round the magic ingredient that runs in the veins of American Idiot had run out by the time the band sat down to write 21st Century Breakdown. Don’t get me wrong, there are some good tracks on here – See The Light, Murder City, Know Your Enemy – but it doesn’t come close to American Idiot and at over an hour long feels a bit bloated.

7. Revolution Radio (2016)

With their failure to recapture the magical heights of American Idiot with 2009’s 21st Century Breakdown and the trilogy in 2012, Green Day were probably feeling like they were in a bit of a pickle in the mid-2010s. Revolution Radio doesn’t have a grandiose concept like every other album they’d released since the turn of the century, but this works in its favour and for me this album is the dark horse of Green Day’s discography. The singles are fantastic and it’s got a lovely little acoustic number in Ordinary World, but in general every song is decent and thankfully it doesn’t drag on forever!

6. Warning (2000)

At this point in the article it’s safe to say that every album is great. Warning didn’t perform well commercially, and it’s not the sort of album to be honoured with an anniversary tour like Dookie or American Idiot, but it does have a selection of fan favourites and setlist staples. It’s a bit of a departure from everything that came before it in terms of its urgency and the role of distorted electric guitar, and if the album cover is anything to go by was perhaps the ‘what do we do now?’ era of the band’s career, but I thoroughly enjoy listening to Warning. It also has the best home run/final three tracks of any Green Day album with Waiting, Minority and Macy’s Day Parade.

5. Saviors (2024)

The latest offering from the pop-punk veterans is their best album since American Idiot, and I’m confident in saying this despite having only listened to it for a couple of weeks. It would be a bit of a stretch to put it in the same category as Dookie and American Idiot, but it’s nice to see the band doing what they do best again and not blatantly trying to appeal to the masses with a more commercial sound. The album sometimes suffers from a lack of flow and cohesion, which can be a bit unsettling, but it’s a really solid album and the band sound fresher and more driven than they have done at any point over the last 15 years.

4. Nimrod (1997)

Nimrod is a well-rounded record and sees the band experiment with a few different sounds for the first time in their career. It’s a long album but with a diverse set of songs always leaves you wanting more. I can’t talk about Nimrod without mentioning Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), which is of course a campfire classic and quite possibly Green Day’s most renowned song, but there are quite a few hidden gems dotted throughout, such as Haushinka, Platypus and Redundant. I’ve enjoyed this album more with each listen, and at 18 songs long I feel there’s still a lot more for me to discover in this classic.

3. Insomniac (1995)

If 21st Century Breakdown is what not to do when attempting to follow up a successful record, Insomniac is what to do. You may be thinking…but the logic applied to 21st Century Breakdown also applies to Insomniac, so what makes Insomniac work? Well, to put it bluntly the songs are just good…and maybe Green Day weren’t trying to replicate the success of Dookie with Insomniac. It was released just a year after Dookie, there aren’t any songs on the album that have stood the test of time where live shows are concerned, but it’s a classic Green Day album that sees the band in cruise control.

2. Dookie (1994)

Of all the tough choices I’ve had to make in this article, deciding to place Dookie second has been the toughest. Dookie is one of my favourite albums of all time and it’s no surprise that it was such a pivotal album in Green Day’s career. Every single song is memorable, there are so many hits (Basket Case, Welcome To Paradise, When I Come Around, Longview), and it really shaped and defined the Green Day sound for years to come. I find it so easy to get lost in this album, and 30 years to the day since its release it still sounds just as fresh as it did the first time I listened to it.

1. American Idiot (2004)

Green Day have two career-defining albums: the first is Dookie, which put them firmly on the musical map. The second is American Idiot, which not only reestablished their status on the map, but skyrocketed their career to a whole new level. I was 12 when American Idiot was released, and it not only defined a really important time in my life but is also the album that made me fall in love with Green Day. Deciding to do a concept album, and not just any old concept album but a rock opera, at the time probably felt like the least Green Day thing they could have done, but it certainly paid off. Every song is an anthem and it feels like an album they were born to do. The fact that the masters for the album they’d originally recorded were stolen, forcing them to write American Idiot, is such a fantastic sliding doors story and I’m sure is something they’re eternally grateful for. Sentimental attachment is part of why American Idiot is top of this list, but to write such a unique album so deep into their career is why they are one of the greatest rock bands of all time.