Hard to know if this was truly one of the best albums ever or if I just heard it at a super impressionable age, but the starting riff on When I Come Around gets me every time
Not to mention, it's more than any single riff. It's the way the chorus ends then that little bass fill hits. And just the combination of the music with the lyrics. There's just that something that just gets everything right enough.
Take Basket Case, the song is pretty fucking simple musically. But it really serves as sort of click track to the vocals.
Taking simplicity and turning it into art takes skill.
The story of Lookout Records being basically kept afloat by selling Kerplunk their first album after they left and blew up is also tragic/hilarious