Green Day - Basket Case

This song is about anxiety attacks and a feeling that you are going crazy. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong suffered from various panic disorders while he was growing up - he would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night with a panic attack and walk around his neighborhood to settle down. "Basket Case" was a cathartic and personal song for him. "The only way I knew how to deal with it was to write a song about it," he explained.

This song stereotypes the whole condition of paranoia and compares it to being stoned.

By the time this came out on Dookie, Green Day had already released two albums on an independent label. They had a small but ardent following that led to a bidding war for the band, which was won by Reprise Records. "Basket Case" was the third single from the album, following "Longview" and "Welcome To Paradise," and it was their breakout hit, getting airplay on Rock, Top 40, and Alternative radio stations.

Lyrics

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?