Green Day share previously unreleased track ‘You Irritate Me’
American punk rock gods Green Day are celebrating the 25th anniversary of their underrated fifth studio album Nimrod with a brand new deluxe reissue of the LP.
The new reissue of the album will feature a remastered version of the original LP, a full album’s worth of demos, a 20-page booklet, a poster, and some other collectable goodies. There’s also a full concert that was recorded one month after the album’s original release in October of 1997, with Green Day busting out tracks at the Electric Factory (now the Franklin Music Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Nimrod was a purposeful departure for Green Day. Four years removed from the breakthrough success of Dookie, the trio were looking to move away from the darker territory that was explored on 1995’s Insomniac. With new songs that referenced everything from ska to folk music, Nimrod was the most diverse record that Green Day had ever put out at the time and remains one of their most fascinating collection of songs.
Compared to the eclectic song list that made the final mix, ‘You Irritate Me’ is a little too close to Dookie-era pop punk to warrant inclusion on the album. The song never got beyond the demo stages of production, and along with another unreleased track titled ‘Tre Polka’, ‘You Irritate Me’ was ultimately left off of Nimrod.
Now, with the 25th anniversary box set ready to run, Green Day have released ‘You Irritate Me’ commercially for the first time. It’s clearly a demo: Billie Joe Armstrong’s guitar sounds thin, and Tré Cool fumbles the beat slightly at one point. But Armstrong and Mike Dirnt are perfectly in sync on their vocals, giving the song that classic Green Day energy.
Check out the demo for ‘You Irritate Me’ down below.
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