Warning (Green Day album)

Warning is the sixth studio album by American punk rock band Green Day. It was released on October 3, 2000 through Reprise Records. Building upon its predecessor, Nimrod (1997), the album eschewed the band's trademark punk rock sound and incorporated acoustic and pop rock elements. Warning was also Green Day's first album since Dookie (1994) that was not produced by Rob Cavallo, although he did have a hand in its production and was credited as executive producer.

Despite mixed criticism towards the band's stylistic change, the album received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Although it peaked at number four on the Billboard 200 chart, Warning represented the lowest commercial slump in the band's career, being their first album since signing to a major record label not to achieve multi-platinum status. The album has nonetheless been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, for shipments of 500,000 copies in the United States.^[12] Warning was reissued on vinyl on July 14, 2009.

Critical reception

Initial reaction

Warning received generally positive reviews from most music critics.^[13] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 72 based on 19 reviews, which indicates "generally favorable reviews".^[13] Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker perceived a maturity in the album's lyrical content and called its music "as peppy as any Green Day have recorded".^[4] Charlotte Robinson of PopMatters commended Billie Joe Armstrong's lyrics and noted the band for embracing "the pop bent that has always been a part of their sound".^[7] The A.V. Club's Stephen Thompson stated "Green Day has never made a record so slick and musically mature".^[14] Los Angeles Times writer Natalie Nichols wrote that the album "reveal[s] them shaking off the transitional aspects of 1997's 'Nimrod' to craft a more coherent, less aggressive but still rebellious collection that also draws on the even older pop traditions of Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Who".^[5] "Metal" Mike Saunders of The Village Voice viewed Warning as the band's best work and compared its music to that of The Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965).^[11] In his consumer guide for The Village Voice, critic Robert Christgau gave the album an A- rating,^[3] indicating "the kind of garden-variety good record that is the great luxury of musical micromarketing and overproduction. Anyone open to its aesthetic will enjoy more than half its tracks".^[15] Christgau noted "professionalism, craft, artistic growth" rather than maturity in Armstrong's songwriting and elaborated on his change in musical direction, stating:

He's abandoning the first person. He's assuming fictional personas. And he's creating for himself the voice of a thinking left-liberal who 'want[s] to be the minority' and cautions against caution itself--a voice that scolds rather than whines, a nice age-appropriate shift. Crucially, his knack for simple punk tunes remains unchanged; also crucially, these do fine at moderate tempos, and one even gives off a whiff of Brecht-Weill.^[3]

—Robert Christgau

In contrast, NME's Andy Capper expressed a mixed response towards the band's "less electric, more organic sound" and stated "Older. More Mature. 'Warning' is the sound of a band losing its way".^[6] Greg Kot of Rolling Stone wrote that Armstrong "can't muster the same excitement for his more mature themes" and stated "Who wants to listen to songs of faith, hope and social commentary from what used to be snot-core's biggest-selling band?".^[8] Adam Downer of Sputnikmusic gave it three out of five stars and commented that it "consists of instant classics like Minority and Macy's Day Parade, but it also is filled with garbage songs as well".^[16] Spin writer Jesse Berrett stated "these maturity moves buoy muzzy be-yourselfism ... Nor does everything in the stylistic grab bag fit", but concluded by complimenting Armstrong's "earnestly good-hearted" lyrics and wrote that "this album is after... evidence that even the snottiest deserve grace and the chance to age into warmth".^[10] Q gave the album three out of five stars and described it as "Hugely likeable, terribly noisy and cute, as well as being jammed with proper pop songs".^[13] Neal Weiss of Yahoo! Music called the album "crafty pop-rock" and stated "Some might wish Green Day never decided to grow up like this, but others might consider it a starting point to take the band seriously".^[17] Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani perceived elements of folk and "pop sensibilities", writing that the album "displays just how well Green Day can construct pop songs".^[9]

Retrospect

In a retrospective review, Rolling Stone's Christian Hoard gave Warning four out of five stars and wrote that the band "fully focus on the textures that have always differentiated their sturdy grooves and simple melodies".^[18] Hoard called its songs "speedy, neatly packaged reinterpretations of pop-rock history, from the Beatles to Creedence Clearwater Revival to the Ramones themselves".^[18] Allmusic writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine called it "gleeful, unabashed fun" and complimented Green Day for "embracing their fondness for pop and making the best damn album they'd ever made".^[2] Erlewine expressed that the band displays "melodic ingenuity and imaginative arrangements" and elaborated on its musical significance, stating "Warning may not be an innovative record per se, but it's tremendously satisfying; it finds the band at a peak of songcraft and performance, doing it all without a trace of self-consciousness. It's the first great pure pop album of the new millennium".^[2] Dom Passantino of Stylus Magazine cited it as "the most influential album on the British pop landscape since 1996 (Spice, naturally)", noting it as a significant influence on "the two biggest bands in the UK at the moment, and indeed for the past few years, Busted and McFly".^[19] Passantino called Warning "a great album" and viewed that Green Day "seemed to be bored with their genre-medium, but simultaneously knowledgeable that any attempt to boundary-hop will end with them falling on their face".^[19]

Track listing

All lyrics written by Billie Joe Armstrong, except where noted, all music composed by Green Day.

B-sides and outtakes

Personnel

^[20]

Chart positions

References

External links

• Warning at Discogs
• Warning at Metacritic