Tony Soprano, Much Like James Gandolfini, Would Have Loved Green Day's 'Dookie'

The Sopranos is officially of a time. While many people watched the legendary and contemporary television show, it bears little resemblance to modern times. There were no smart phones or social media. At this point it's basically a period drama. Yet it is still relevant, popular and beloved, just like Green Day's seminal album, Dookie, which we just learned that James Gandolfini freaking loved via Instagram comments from Michael Imperioli.

Dookie came out in February 1994 when Gandolfini was just 32 years old. By the time The Sopranos premiered the album was just about to turn five years old. It makes perfect sense that he would have loved one of the best albums of the 90's. It would also stand to reason that the music would have resonated with Tony Soprano.

You can't possibly listen to Dookie and not think that Tony would have identified with the lyrics, even if the pop punk alternative classic wasn't what his friends might have enjoyed. As Wikipedia notes, there are songs that deal with "anxiety and panic attacks, masturbation, sexual orientation, boredom, mass murder, divorce, and ex-girlfriends." Tony would obviously buck at the sexual orientation part, but everything else is spot on.

That doesn't even take into account that in Welcome to Paradise, the main character writes to his mother about moving out and moving on. If "a wasteland I like to call my home" isn't how someone in waste management in New Jersey would describe where they live, I don't know what to tell you. It's like Dr. Melfi was treating Billy Joe Armstrong.

It's actually kind of sad that Tony couldn't have used Green Day to connect with his kids. Not that it would have worked. AJ always leaned a little harder towards metal, no matter how mainstream. And Meadow never would have listened to anything her father enjoyed. Even the fact that Dookie ends with a prolonged silence and a secret song seems to work with The Sopranos.

So Green Day would have been Tony's alone. But it also means that Nimrod, Warning and American Idiot may have also been played on set during filming of The Sopranos, which did not end until 2007. I'm looking at the dates related to all these things and seeing the numbers match up, but they still make no sense. How did these things exist together?

Green Day is from the 90s and exists today, but The Sopranos seems like it is from a different timeline altogether. The fact that Tony and his kids might have liked the same thing makes it impossible to exist in The Sopranos universe. Still, the fact that Gandolfini loved Dookie should be enough.