This was a talent that Green Day demonstrated on their brilliant first three albums for Reprise (1994’s Dookie, 1995’s Insomniac and 1997’s Nimrod). This is distilling all the tuneful pleasure in a song into a few lines that can be pounded home without ever losing their appeal. This is a different gift than that of, say, Paul McCartney or Taylor Swift, who can spin out a melody that stays interesting over 32 bars. Otherwise you’re going to sound merely mechanical, even if you get as loud as Jett’s hard-rock peers in the ’80s or as fast as Green Day’s punk peers in the ’90s.įortunately, both Armstrong and Jett have a rare gift for inventing-or borrowing-four-bar phrases that are familiar enough to feel comfortable, new enough to feel memorable and rhythmic enough to be heard in the hips as well as the ears. She understood better than anyone that if you’re going to strip rock ’n’ roll down to its 4/4 basics, you’d better add a catchy sweetener. If they wanted to climb out of their 21st-century slump of straining-for-meaning concept albums, Green Day couldn’t have adopted a better role model than Jett. Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong wrote new verses to vent his disdain for social-media narcissism, but the chorus’s shotgun marriage of melodic hook and slam-bang beat remains irresistible. One of the highlights on Green Day’s recent career-reviving album, Father of All Motherfuckers, is the song “Oh Yeah!” which takes its title, its earworm chorus and its sizzling guitar riff from the 1980 track “Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah)” by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.

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