Vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong wrote “Good Riddance” after a break-up with a girlfriend who moved to Ecuador.

Billie Joe said in Guitar World, “In the song, I tried to be level-headed about her leaving, even though I was completely pissed off. So I named it ‘Good Riddance’ just to express my anger." (Source 2)

Just as Armstrong ‘pounded a beer backstage to get up the courage’ before premiering the song to a New Jersey audience, the narrator uses the pretense of sarcasm to hide the narrator’s mature acceptance of breaking up, growing up and moving on with adult life.

“Good Riddance” was written and first presented to the band during the Dookie sessions, but the band agreed that it didn’t fit the record.

When the band was working on Nimrod, Emo music was enjoying success with independent labels such as Drive-Through Record and Vagrant Records and many of these bands opened for Green Day on tour. The growing popularity of emo arguably gave Green Day permission to experiment with new themes and essentially renege on their promise to never go acoustic.

Green Day’s first ballad brought broadened the band’s fan base while alienating some. Many long time fans denounced the band with Nimrod, citing this song as an example of the band’s selling out.

Some fans remained, insisting that the narrator’s sentiments are merely glib and sarcastic. And as the song become popular with high school proms, fans commented that ‘the preppies and normal kids’ had misappropriated the song and to an extent, they are correct. The song isn’t about being happy. Its about broken hearts and missed opportunities.

However, when confronted with the phenomenal popularity of playing the song at High School Prom, Armstrong said it makes sense to him:

The people that you grew up and braved the trials of high school with will always hold a special place. Through all the BS of high school you hope that your friends had the time of their life, and that’s what the song is talking about.