Written mostly by the singer and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, the album is largely based on his personal experiences and includes themes such as boredom, anxiety, relationships, and sexuality.

It was promoted with four singles: "Longview", "Basket Case", a re-recorded version of "Welcome to Paradise" (which originally appeared on the band's second studio album, 1991's Kerplunk), and "When I Come Around".

After several years of grunge's dominance in popular music, Dookie brought a livelier, more melodic rock sound to the mainstream and propelled Green Day to worldwide fame.

[3] With the success in the independent world of the band's first two albums, 39/Smooth (1990) and Kerplunk (1991), which sold 30,000 units each,[4][5] a number of major record labels became interested in Green Day.

To lighten the mood, he invited them to a Mexican restaurant and bar down the street from Fantasy Studios, even though the drummer Tré Cool was not of legal drinking age at the time.

[23] During the remixing process, the band took to Music Grinder Studio in Los Angeles to re-record the tracks "Chump" and "Longview" as the original recordings had been "plagued by an inordinate amount of tape hiss".

The album touched upon various experiences of the band members and included subjects such as anxiety and panic attacks, masturbation, sexual orientation, boredom, mass murder, divorce, domestic abuse, and ex-girlfriends.

[22] Sonically closer to the band's material on Kerplunk!,[40] it is an unconventional love song that uses irony and sarcasm in an effort to avoid being direct, and centers on a couple wasting time together in a romantic relationship.

[22] Asked in 2014 if the choice was a mistake in hindsight, Armstrong said it had been an impulsive "stoner thing": "We were smoking a lot of weed [and said] 'Hey, man, wouldn't it be funny if...'"[8] For its cover art, the band commissioned artist Richie Bucher, who created a cartoon-like work depicting bombs being dropped on people and buildings.

[6]When the trio went to Warner's offices in Los Angeles to discuss marketing for the album, label officials initially wanted the cover to feature a photograph of the comely young men, but the band refused.

George Weiss, Warner's marketing director, noted that the band came from a distinctly different culture than most of their artists, and Green Day had gained the leverage with the label to insist on a different choice.

[7] Some rumors suggest that it was removed because it led parents to think that Dookie was a child's lullaby album or that the creators of Sesame Street had sued Green Day.

[6] While rehearsing in the house they rented in Berkeley at the end of 1993 in anticipation of a tour for Dookie,[19] the band was invited to the Warner offices in Los Angeles to discuss the marketing strategy around the album with Weiss.

In early 1995, Jon Pareles of The New York Times wrote, "Punk turns into pop in fast, funny, catchy, high-powered songs about whining and channel-surfing; apathy has rarely sounded so passionate.

"[93] Rolling Stone's Paul Evans described Green Day as "convincing mainly because they've got punk's snotty anti-values down cold: blame, self-pity, arrogant self-hatred, humor, narcissism, fun".

[94] Jesse Raub, writing for Alternative Press, praised "Burnout" for immediately opening with a "huge, polished production value without abandoning their scrappy, loose punk playing" which consistently shines through the rest of the album's tracks.

[87] Neil Strauss of the New York Times, while complimentary of the album's overall quality, followed up Pareles' review by noting that Dookie's pop sound only remotely resembled punk music.

[30] Green Day's Dookie—along with the Offspring's Smash, released two months later—has been credited for helping bring punk rock back into mainstream music culture.

[28][29][96][97] NME argues, "Dookie's success proved to record label, film and TV [executives] that the teen rock revolution they had been witnessing for much of the early '90s didn't have to be all gloomy nihilism and angsty sonics.

[27] On the album's twentieth anniversary, The Daily Beast wrote that before its release "rock meant grunge: heavy, monotonic, humorless, and bleak", but the lighter tone of Dookie changed the public's general understanding of the term.

"[97] Berkeley-based Rancid was one of the first bands to capitalize on the hype created by Green Day and the Offspring with ...And Out Come the Wolves, giving the new punk rock movement stability.

[3] Some critics claim that Dookie allowed numerous similar artists to enjoy long careers, including Rancid, New Found Glory, Fall Out Boy, Panic!

[29] NME believes Blink-182's Enema of the State (1999), Sum 41's All Killer No Filler (2001), My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade (2006), and even Lady Gaga's The Fame (2008) could not have been created without Dookie.

1 on its "1994: The 40 Best Records From Mainstream Alternative's Greatest Year" list, ahead of Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral and Weezer's self-titled debut.

[105] On October 9, 2024, the band announced Dookie Demastered, a collaboration with the Los Angeles–based art studio BRAIN where each song on the album was ported onto an "obscure, obsolete and otherwise inconvenient" format, such as a wax cylinder and a Teddy Ruxpin; those who won in a drawing would be eligible to purchase each item.

[106][107] Dookie has appeared on many prominent "must have" lists compiled by the music media, including: In mid-1993, while recording and mixing the album, Green Day opened for several Bad Religion concerts, allowing them to play new songs to a live audience.

[7] From late April to early June 1994, the band toured Europe, playing around 40 concerts in the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain and Sweden.

Because the tour prevented them from properly planning their wedding and their honeymoon, the two married in a small ceremony on July 2, 1994, attended only by Green Day's two other members and their girlfriends.

Although organizers hoped that Green Day would be a big draw, their punk rock style stuck out at the event and the band's performance was poorly received by the crowd.

After several calls for calm, including some from Armstrong, the group began their performance, but the singer let himself be carried away by the energy of the audience and jumped into the middle of it during "Longview", the seventh song of the set.