What’s Green Day’s biggest hit of the ’90s? At least in terms of total sales, not chart position, it’s probably the least Green Day-like of all their hits, “Good Riddance.” Nearly three decades later, it is one of their top five most-streamed songs too, no matter how unlike the rest of their (’90s) oeuvre it is.
Gigi Perez is a Cuban-American singer-songwriter based in Florida who has been releasing singles for about half a decade. Her song “Sailor Song” blew up on TikTok in 2024. Hollister enlisted her for their new ad campaign and she’s done a cool thing with it: she’s covered “Good Riddance” as country rock.
The ad opens with Perez visiting a photo booth and then very briefly plays the false opening of the original. But when it’s her turn to play acoustic guitar, she swings it: she strums with a country shuffle completely ignoring the famous arpeggio part.
Perez’s voice is actually closer to Billie Joe Armstrong’s than you might imagine and there are times as she’s singing, when she’s not using her full range, that you could almost swear it’s him singing instead, albeit without his notorious affect. But that changes when she goes for high notes. And the song around her doesn’t resemble the original much at all. There’s no string section and instead there’s slightly countrified electric guitar and a bass drum stomp straight out of a Stomp Clap Hey song. Don’t worry, though, it’s just that drum! Everything else about the arrangement skews closer to country rock, except Perez’s voice, which doesn’t have the twang.
It’s an unexpected and fun genre change. Check it out below:
I hate to say this, but I think that Perez’s arrangement fits the lyrics better than the original does.