Written by bassist Mike Dirnt about a friend who committed suicide in a car crash,[4] the song was a previously unreleased track from the Dookie sessions but it was later featured on the soundtrack to the movie Angus in 1995.

In August 1995, the song reached number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and spent 16 weeks on it.

The acronym stands for Jason Andrew Relva, a childhood friend of Green Day bassist Mike Dirnt.

Relva was born on November 16, 1972, and died at the age of 19 on April 18, 1992, as the result of injuries sustained from a car crash.

as the ninth best Green Day song, commenting "It's a winner in its own right, and in a sense, its bubbling bass, buzzing chord crashes, and Tre Cool's killer chorus drum beat is the Platonic ideal of a Green Day song.