Songs that we´ll take in our Souls 4ever: Basket Case - Green Day

Let's start with the one that I particularly consider my favorite song of aaaaaaaall around the world...

I heard it for the first time a looooong time ago. In the living room of my house we had a jukebox of those that were a relic. It was a wooden cabinet with turntables, AM radio and SW (short wave). It was so old that I did not pick up FM. My old man occasionally used it to listen to outside stations (I remember that he ALWAYS played Radio Habana-Cuba). One afternoon I sat down to look for stations, I tuned in a French one (I knew it by the speaker's accent) and suddenly I heard that melody that I liked so much. Their fast rhythms immediately captivated my ears. So much so that I started tuning in to several stations, hoping to listen to it again. Until one day I finally came up with the name:

Basket Case/ Green Day

It was written in the year of 1994 by Billie Joe Armstrong, the vocalist / guitarist and leader of the North American band Green Day. It is the third single extracted from the third album of the band: Dookie. His lyrics were composed as a way of venting several anecdotes lived during the adolescence of Billie Joe. According to himself, he suffered from attacks of paranoia, anxiety, self-esteem and depression, which he considered that would lead to dementia and decided to capture all those anecdotes in the lyrics of a song.

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?
Or 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?
A ya-ya-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?
Or am I just stoned?

Its title does not have a very specific explanation, but the one that convinces me the most is one that I once read there. According to, in the United States people who are with high levels of dementia (nuts) have to carry them in a basket. In fact, his official video (broadcasted several times by the ultra famous MTV network) was made at the request of the band on the premises of a real psychiatric institute (Agnews Developmental Center) in Santa Clara County, California, USA, which had been abandoned and where the vocalist and the members of the band are shown accompanied by psychiatric doctors. Note that this was the second video of the Band (after Longview) and was nominated for nine MTV Video Music Awards in 1995: Video of the Year, Best Video of a Group, Best Cinematography, Best Choice of Viewers, Best Video Revelation, Best Direction, Best Editing, Best Metal / Hard Rock Video, and Best Alternative Video.