CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Kerplunk (album)

1991 studio album by Green Day

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ188194
Source-derived summary

Kerplunk (stylized as Kerplunk!) is the second studio album by the American rock band Green Day. It was released on December 17, 1991 in the United Kingdom and formally released in the United States on January 17, 1992, by Lookout! Records. It is the band's first album to feature drummer Tré Cool, replacing original drummer John Kiffmeyer, who left the band to attend college following a US tour promoting their debut studio album 39/Smooth (1990). In May 1991, they decamped to Art of Ears Studios in San Francisco, California, to record their next album with Andy Ernst, who co-produced the sessions with band. Six songs were recorded until the proceedings stopped in order for Green Day to resume touring, returning to the studio in September 1991 to finish the work.

Mostly seen as a pop-punk and punk rock album, the songs on Kerplunk dealt with love and frontman Billie Joe Armstrong's subconscious. Some of the tracks also tackled the theme of boredom, while others focused on alienation. The artwork for the album was created by Chris Appelgren and Pat Hynes, based on a story written by Lookout founder Larry Livermore. It follows a girl who is obsessed with Green Day, eventually getting arrested by its end for murdering her parents.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kerplunk (album)” is 1991 studio album by Green Day. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kerplunk, album and studio, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1991, 1992, 1990—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1991, 1991-12-17—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Kerplunk, album and studio is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1991 studio album by Green Day” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q188194. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991, 1992 and 1990.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Kerplunk (album)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Kerplunk (album) primary sources, Kerplunk (album) archive and Kerplunk research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Kerplunk (album)”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Kerplunk (album)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.