Behind the Song: Basket Case

The song Basket Case featured in Green Day’s album Dookie was shockingly written in the group’s headquarters. A place of which singer Billie Joe Armstrong ate, smoked, slept, and recovered from harsh performances. It was less of a crashpad than it was a shabby student basement in California college of Berkley. 

At the time, Billie was only 22 years old, and he heavily struggled with panic and anxiety-related disorders. Not only that, but the band was still trying to pick their feet up from the ground. They weren’t one of those groups that make the classics without really breaking a sweat. In fact, after putting out the now hit, it stalled at 55 on UK charts. 

The complex lyrics go on to scream in between chorus, “Sometimes I give myself the creeps, sometimes my mind plays tricks on me. If all keeps adding up, I think I’m cracking up.” In the past, Billie was fearful to the extreme about losing the plot; he later claimed that what helped him was writing down his thoughts, which evolved into “Basket Case.” 

“Basket Case is about anxiety attacks and feeling like you’re about to go crazy. At times I probably was. I’ve suffered from panic disorders my entire life. I thought I was losing my mind. The only way I could know what the hell was going on was to write a song about it,” Billie went on to explain. 

The song just keeps getting better as it unfolds. According to Billie, he writes in the first person no matter the story he’s trying to get across, regardless of whether it’s his own thoughts or some general idea. 

The following lyrics go on to say this:

“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, and I quit my whining cause it’s bringing her down.” This refers to bisexuality. He came out to his fans of liking both sexes. The song overly makes connections to myself, and I am assuming thousands of others, if not more, can emotionally relate. 

The band grew enormously, transitioning from local shows to performing big in arenas. But Green Day did receive quite a lot of backlash though there was more love than hate. 

“When it came out, we had no control over who liked it,” recollects drummer Tré Cool. “We had a bunch of super-fivin’ marines going, ‘Yeah, cool, you’re my favourite fuckin’ band, bro!’ You have no control, so you just go, ‘Oh, great, whatever’. We were playing too many Coliseum-style shows. All these ice rinks around Europe, the US and Canada – it gets really impersonal after a while. It became like, ‘OK, let’s play Basket Case again’.” 

‘Fans’ voiced concerns and claimed that they pushed certain subjects way too far. A note even ran around reading, “Billie Joe must die.” So as anyone would in regards to their feelings and work, Green day clapped back, saying: “We’re not going to try and write Basket Case 12 times in a row for one record.”

Basket Case is seemingly one of the best Green Day songs that carries quite a bit of baggage with it. The song went on to become a pop-punk hit that nearly every rock-head knows. Just at 22, Billie created a masterpiece that not only sounded brilliant but connected with thousands.