Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)

Armstrong wrote the song in 1993 about Amanda, a girlfriend who moved to Ecuador, and he named it Good Riddance to show his anger. He showed it to the band during the Dookie sessions, where it was judged too different from the other songs. An early version in a different key, with a faster tempo and a sparer arrangement, was a B-side on the European single for Brain Stew/Jaded. For Nimrod Cavallo suggested strings. He sent the band to play foosball in another room and recorded them in perhaps 15 to 30 minutes, and later said it was a hit the second he heard it. David Campbell arranged the strings.

The album version starts with Armstrong fumbling the opening chords twice and muttering a swear word before he gets it right. The band kept the mistakes, and radio versions and the video leave out the second attempt. Dirnt said that releasing it was probably the most punk thing they could have done. It was released in December 1997, peaked at number 11 on the Hot 100 Airplay chart, and had sold more than five million copies by November 2022, making it their most commercially successful single. Mark Kohr directed the video in Los Angeles, and it won the 1998 MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video.

The song was heard in the Seinfeld episode The Clip Show, and it became a staple at proms. Armstrong said the lyric is about hoping that the friends you grew up with had the time of their life. It is usually the final song of a Green Day concert.

Live

At the opening ceremony of Super Bowl LX on 8 February 2026, an instrumental of Good Riddance opened the band's performance.