My Breakdown of 21st Century Breakdown

I told you I'd post about the new Green Day eventually. Yeah, it's been out for about a month now, the second single is playing on the radio, and anyone who likes Green Day probably has already picked up 21st Century Breakdown and listened to it several times. So I'm not sure what service, if any, I'm doing by blogging about it. But it's my blog, and I can do what I want, so there.

I'll start by saying that I like 21st Century Breakdown. I like it, but not nearly as much as American Idiot (which might be in my top-5 albums of all time). American Idiot greatly surprised me when it came out. Before even listening to American Idiot I remember thinking "Holy crap, some 9-minute-long songs? From GREEN DAY??" Politically charged and angry, just about every song on the album made me want to jump and scream along and do the rock-hand thing. It was a perfect Green Day album.

I didn't expect 21st C.B. to match Ameican Idiot, because I didn't think it could surprise me like American Idiot surprised me, and I didn't think it could be as politically charged as American Idiot. Green Day and I hate George W. Bush, so American Idiot was awesome. Green Day and I like Obama... so what should we rage/rock about now? Uh, not much I guess. Green Day keeps the rock-opera formula that they used for Idiot, but really it's just story-telling with 21st C.B. instead of protesting. The first track "Song of the Century" is a little melodic poem that even says "tell us a story..." in the lyrics. I could honestly see their new album performed as a high school play someday, and the parents would think it delightful.

I don't know if this should be taken as an insult or a compliment, but the new Green Day sounds a lot like Green Day. By that I mean many of their songs sound very similar to older Green Day songs. For example, "Peacemaker", which is actually one of my favorite tracks, is just a good ol' fashioned goofy jump around, sing aloud song, but it does sound a lot like a mashup of two older Green Day songs. It's got the fun and pep of "King for a Day" from their Nimrod album, and sounds an awful lot like a faster paced version of "Misery" from the Warning album.

As a whole, I felt like 21st C.B. pretty much took my favorite song from American Idiot, "Jesus of Suburbia", and stretched it out into 18 tracks. In doing so there are still elements of awesomeness, but it's diluted compared to the "compact" 9-minute version on Idiot, and the songs are more about religion than politics.

It probably sounds like I'm hating on the album, when I did enjoy it. My favorite song is probably "¡Viva La Gloria!" I like the image of Gloria "blasting" her name in graffiti, and as a Minnesotan I like the lyric "she smashed her knuckles into winter". I also enjoyed the lyric on the second track (also titled "21st Century Breakdown"), "I never made it as a working class hero". A couple years ago Green Day did a cover of John Lennon's Working Class Hero, which I liked a lot. I enjoy little nods like this.

Tangent: I liked it here, and I liked it in Terminator: Salvation. John Conner is waging war against the machines and there are bullets and robots and explosions and cool stuff goin' down, and he takes a moment to flick on a tape player to blast GNR's "You Could Be Mine". Get it? Because he totally did that when he was a kid in T2! Woooo! Rock hand!

Bottom line: not the greatest Green Day album ever... heck, it might even be one of the worst as far as having something to throw on and just rock out to... but there are still some good tunes on there, and it's nice to have more Green Day. 3/5 stars (and yes, 3 stars puts it in the running for worst Green Day album ever, even though it's pretty good).