It was winter, 1994. Our politicians were talking about Europe and globalization, Jugoslavia was torn by a civil war, Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction were shot and the following year they would win the Oscar prize. In the meantime, in Rwanda two enemy tribes, the Tutsis and the Hutus, were fighting each other cruelly.
In the USA and all around the world the radio was transmitting the song "Basket Case": punk rock was still alive, Green Day were the proof!
Listen to this song:
The American punk rock band released their third album, Dookie, in 1994. Its popularity made Punk music mainstream and it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
Even if the music sounds dynamic and overwhelming the real meaning of the lyrics is actually quite different and not so positive. Let's have a look at the meaning!
Do you have the time to listen to me whine
About nothing and everything
All at once I am one of those melodramatic fools
Neurotic to the bone
No doubt about it
Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
Am I just stoned?
I went to a shrink to analyze my dreams
She says it's lack of sex that's bringing me down
I went to a whore
He said my life's a bore
So quit my whining cause
It's bringing her down
Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
Uh, yuh, yuh, ya
Grasping to control
So I better hold on
Sometimes I give myself the creeps
Sometimes my mind plays tricks on me
It all keeps adding up
I think I'm cracking up
Am I just paranoid?
Am I just stoned?
The singer is talking about himself: he is worried about his actual situation. He asks to himself "Am I just paranoid? Am I just stoned?" He is going to a "shrink", a psychoanalyst, to a whore... he's looking for answers about his state, but nobody seems to be able to help him. The singer is cracking up, he doesn't know what to do and when he looks at his own situation he "gives himself the creeps".
The energetic music and the hallucinatory state of the dazed singer are the main features of the whole song.
Glossary
torn: divided, lacerated
shot: filmed
alive: if you are alive, you are living, in other words you are not dead
to release: to set someone or something free, like a caged animal or a prisoner / to prepare something for public distribution
mainstram: what is viewed my most people as normal
overwhelming: something very intense and
lyric: the words of a song
to whine: to complain in an annoying way, to cry like a baby
fool: idiot
bone: a single section of a stone
to give someone the creeps: to have the feeling of fear and revulsion
to play trick: to deceive, to make someone believe something untrue
to crack up: to suffer a nervous break down
stoned: under the influence of narcotics
shrink: it's the informal word to refer to a therapist, a psychiatrist
lack: the absence of something (eg. when there's a lack of food, people starve, they die)
to bring someone down: to move something or someone to a lower position
whore: a prostitute
bore: if your freinds fall asleep every time you open your mouth, probably you are a bore (in other words, you are not very interesting)
to quit: to stop doing something
to hold on: to be persistent, to refuse to stop