Released January 31, 1995 Recorded 1993 | Format CD single Length 2:58 | |
Label Reprise, WEA International |
"When I Come Around" is a song released by American punk rock band Green Day. It is the tenth track on their third studio album, Dookie, which was released as the fourth single from that album in 1995. "When I Come Around" was Green Day's most popular radio single in their early career, peaking at number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay. This was their highest charting radio single until 2004's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" peaked at number 2. It was one of the most successful alternative rock songs of 1995. It topped the Modern Rock Tracks for seven weeks, and also hit number two on the Mainstream Rock Tracks. "When I Come Around" has sold 639,000 copies as of August, 2010, which makes it the band's second best-selling single of the 1990s, only behind the 1997 hit "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)".
Contents
Initial pressing
- "When I Come Around" – 2:58
- "Coming Clean" (live) – 1:36
- "She" (live) – 2:14
AU single
- "When I Come Around" – 2:58
- "Longview" (live) – 3:30
- "Burnout" (live) – 2:11
- "2,000 Light Years Away" (live) – 2:48
7" picture disc
Side A
Side B
Music video
The music video shows the band walking to different places, like the Mission District and the Powell Street Station in San Francisco and Berkeley, California at night, along with various scenes of people doing common things all inter-related. One of the first scenes of the video eventually leads back to the scene at the end. The band's friend and now secondary guitarist Jason White can be seen in the video with his girlfriend at the time. Mark Kohr directed this video.
Before the video was filmed, MTV aired a live performance of the song by the band at the 1994 Woodstock Festival.
MTV's Ultimate Albums: Dookie special credited the simple horizontally-striped sweater worn by Armstrong in the video for starting a fashion trend of similar sweaters.