Kiss me like its the first time lyrics

This was written as an acoustic song to distinguish it from the heavily produced rock music that was popular in the '90s. Armstrong recalled to Spin Magazine in a 2010 interview: "That was really the first time we attempted a ballad. The first time we ever played that song was during an encore in New Jersey - I had to pound a beer backstage to get up the courage. I knew we were gonna take a tomato to the face."

The song was such a sonic departure for the band that record stores reported a high rate of returns from customers who purchased the Nimrod album expecting similar songs.

Billie Joe Armstrong wrote this song in 1993 and submitted it for the band's first major-label album, Dookie, which was released in 1994. Both the band and their label felt it was a great song but didn't fit on the album, which was loaded with punk blasters. The song was held back and didn't make their next album, Insomniac (1995) either. It was finally included on the Nimrod album in 1997.

This song was featured on two very high-profile TV shows in 1998. It was used on the penultimate Seinfeld episode in a scene where the cast takes a nostalgic look back at all the adventures they had on the show. It also featured in the ER in an episode "Gut Reaction," in a scene where a young boy dies of cancer.

Armstrong got the inking to try an acoustic song when he found himself at a house party in Berkeley, California with a bunch of college students. He described it as a "weird-dudes-with-ponytails-and-an-acoustic-guitar moment."

The line "tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial" relates to a tattoo Billie Joe Armstrong had of the girl he wrote the song about (he says her name is Amanda). When she moved away, he had it covered up.

A very poignant song, this is quite popular at graduations and weddings despite the kiss-off title "Good Riddance." Billie Joe Armstrong wrote it about a very specific event in his life, but he's thrilled when others relate it to their own experience.

Billie Joe Armstrong came up with the video's concept. Directed by Mark Kohr, it pauses on ordinary moments in people's everyday lives. To capture the "still frames in your mind," the extras were told not to blink, but some of them couldn't help it. Armstrong does plenty of blinking, but you won't see him smiling. Drummer Tre Cool chipped Armstrong's front teeth while he was throwing television sets out of their hotel window - a stunt that nearly cost them the video.

Green Day's label got pitches for the video from directors Mark Kohr, Roman Coppola and Kevin Kerslake, all of whom had done videos for the band. They rejected them all because they were too morbid, each one having something to do with death. Kohr, whose treatment had an undertaker putting makeup on a corpse, offered to make a video on the fly in the three days the band would be in New York. Kohr had done several Green Day videos by this point, including "Basket Case" and "When I Come Around," and had a great rapport with them.

In a Songfacts interview with Kohr, he explained how it came together and what it symbolizes. "I tagged along with them for three days, and it was incredible," he said. "They did two or three television shows. They were on 120 Minutes with Matt Pinfield. They were on Conan, and then they did a show at Tower Records and they did a show at Roseland, so they were very busy, and it was really fun.

The show at Roseland was the last thing. It was an incredible show and it ended with the song 'Time Of Your Life,' which was just wonderful. And when we were on the Conan show, we were waiting there in the greenroom and Conan was in there playing the guitar with Billie. He's a really great guy, a real social guy. Conan went off to do the show, and Billie said, 'OK, I want everyone out of the room except for Mike and Tré and Mark because we're going to talk about the video. I'm going to come up with an idea.'

We hadn't talked about it at all. Billie said, 'Maybe we make kind of like a Pogues video with people who are working-class people that are in their scene. They look really great and it looks really beautiful even though it's really ordinary, and it's kind of like they're drunk.'

And that was it. Bang. That was as much as I needed.

I worked on the idea and wasn't too crazy about the drunk part because it's such a fricking beautiful song, but all the other stuff I allowed. Then I remembered there's a Wim Wenders film called Wings Of Desire that's about an angel. Like, this guy is an angel and can move around and listen to people's thoughts and hear their conversations and so forth. It's a really beautiful film.

So how did he move around? He kind of pops around, but there's this one part of the film where they do this hand-held thing with a slow shutter speed where they run around really quick at night, like here's a person - vroom - and here's another person - vroom - here's another person - vroom. And that little bit, it just hung with me. I felt like it was a metaphor for connection, so I was playing with that idea.

I defined it like this. I said, 'There's moments in your life - and they can be really ordinary - where everything seems really vibrant and alive and open and it's just clear. You are connected.'

Later I came to hear from different philosophers that the term for that is 'satori,' which is the feeling of universal connectedness and the clarity and beauty in that. So I was working with that. All these people are connected in their consciousness and in that kind of feeling of satori, and the individual is fully connected. So the visual technique and the metaphor had to arise that feeling in the viewer.

I took a big f--king risk because it was a lot of money. We had three days to shoot and each one of those scenes, except for the girl who we open with, is only seen one time, and yet when we shot it we were moving from location to location shooting with 35mm cameras, dolly tracks, high-speed film, going through the camera and then hand-held and doing really nice lighting in these ordinary situations. I was trying to have reflections be seen through the windows and so forth, so there's just that little bit of information, and then sew it all together in this piece.

When we were shooting, the assistant director would say, 'Mark, are you sure you don't want to shoot any coverage? You don't want to shoot anything else?' I was like 'No, it's not that kind of video.' I didn't shoot any coverage because I didn't want to spend that kind of time and I didn't want to lock myself into that creative, so I took the risk and luckily it all worked out, and as far as my career as a music video director, that was my greatest gift because afterward the visual technique showed up in television, in commercials and in movies. Art is a conversation, and we all add to the conversation and we all take from the conversation as it has preceded us, so I was really honored that other people were inspired enough to integrate that technique and that look into their pieces as well."

Like Pearl Jam, Green Day went through a period in the mid-'90s when they decided not to make music videos, which seemed to make MTV love them more. "Good Riddance" won for Best Alternative Video at the 1998 MTV Video Music Awards.

Regarding the album title, Nimrod, that word may not mean what you think it does. A "nimrod" is actually a skilled hunter, but most Americans use it to mean "idiot." Green Day bass player Mike Dirnt got the idea when he found out the British Royal Air Force had an aircraft called the Nimrod.