Music Review: Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
6.0 / 10. Solid Pop-Punk Album, but Too Long and Too Many Ballads
May 20, 2009
Fifteen years after the release of the band’s multiplatinum breakthrough, “Dookie,” who would have thought that Billie Joe Armstrong and the other goofballs from Green Day would still be among the biggest rock stars in the world?
Strange as the case may be, Green Day’s latest album, “21st Century Breakdown,” comes as five years after the band started donning black suits and eyeliner for 2004 mega-album “American Idiot.” “American Idiot” is probably the first album billed as a “punk rock opera” to sell 14 million copies worldwide. However, this brings up the question that has been following Green Day since they dropped “Dookie”: is Green Day a punk band?
Green Day is not a punk band
Not in any traditional sense. Not the way bands like the Ramones or the Sex Pistols or the Dead Kennedys were in the late ‘70s. Perhaps they once were, way back in the band’s pre-Dookie era, but they haven’t been a true punk band in a long time.
More than anything, Green Day is a pop-punk band, which in and of itself is a really confusing genre, considering that pop and punk are essentially polar opposites. Pop-punk has remained somewhat popular over the last decade, without really breaking any new ground or even being particularly relevant to people who aren’t under the age of 16. But Green Day are the kings of pop-punk. Nobody else is even close.
Following up “American Idiot”
With the politically charged “American Idiot,” Green Day achieved something few bands have – they made late-career changes to be taken more seriously as artists and this actually made them more successful and more respected. When considering how many artists from the ‘90s have embarrassed themselves horribly within the last decade, you have to give Green Day some credit here.
Now that Green Day has opened the door to be taken somewhat seriously as it pertains to political and cultural criticism, “21st Century Breakdown” proves there’s no going back to the days of “Basket Case” or “Brain Stew.” This album is the same type of “rock opera” with vague running themes and heroically broken characters as its immediate predecessor.
Breaking down the "Breakdown"
The first noticeable difference from “AI” is the sheer length of the album. The three acts of this “opera” – Heroes And Cons, Charlatans And Saints, Horseshoes And Handgrenades – clock in at a grand total of 71 minutes. Realistically, Green Day could have shaved off a good 15 minutes from this album without losing much.
However, what has always separated Green Day from their pop-punk/slacker-alternative brethren is the fact that the band has a true pop sensibility and their songs have always been super-catchy and well-written, even if they’re ridiculously simple.
Songs like the album’s title track, “Before The Lobotomy,” “East Jesus Nowhere,” “Last Of American Girls,” and first single “Know Your Enemy” are all undeniably catchy, and prove that Green Day is at their best with the amplifiers turned up.
But where songs like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends” were successes (until they got unbelievably overplayed) the slower, balladesque tracks on “21st Century Breakdown” is where the album becomes much less interesting.
“Last Night On Earth” is flat out awful yet it’s destined to be overplayed by some crappy pop station. And I’m already sick of hearing “21 Guns” and “Restless Heart Syndrome.”
If Green Day would have shortened the album by removing the obligatory ballad-rockers, the album would be an outright success instead of merely an above average release from a band that may or may not be well past it’s prime.
Bottom Line
Ultimately, “21st Century Breakdown” lands Green Day in the same spot they’ve been since “American Idiot” became hugely popular. It’s unclear whether they should be taken seriously as “grown-up rockers” but they still deliver some really catchy songs on every album and they don’t give a **** about screaming at the government, which is more than most bands can say.
But with all of the band’s effort to be a voice in the 21st century iPod generation, Billie Joe confesses in the album’s pseudo-climactic “American Eulogy” that he “don’t wanna live in the modern world,” which still comes off as the same dude who was pissed off that he wasn’t getting any in the early ‘90s. This is still a band that could be better than what they are.
