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?
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