“Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” appears on Green Day’s album Nimrod. The song was released as the album’s second single in 1997 and became one of the band’s most recognizable songs.
Nimrod, Green Day’s fifth studio album, arrived on October 14, 1997. It showed the band expanding beyond its traditional pop-punk sound, incorporating acoustic music, folk influences, ska, surf rock, and other styles. The acoustic “Good Riddance” became the album’s most enduring crossover hit.
Billie Joe Armstrong originally wrote the song in 1993 about a former girlfriend who moved to Ecuador. Green Day recorded an early version during the Dookie sessions, but it was considered too different from that album’s sound. For Nimrod, producer Rob Cavallo added strings, helping shape the familiar arrangement.
Listeners sometimes associate the song with Dookie because it was written during that period. However, the finished, widely released version belongs to Nimrod, not Dookie, Warning, or Insomniac.