Green Day

American Idiot

December 21, 2004

# 1

Let me get this out of way first and foremost: I have never been a fan of Green Day. Aside from acknowledging the catchiness of their tunes, and being quite surprised with how many legitimate hits they somewhat deservedly had when faced with their International Superhits best of a couple years back, I have always felt that they totally deserve the negative connotation they receive from the punk rock world. Are they suburban poseurs co-opting the primal rage of urban suffering and passing it off much like what most of hip-hop currently does? Looking back on their catalogue, I’d say most certainly, yes they are. They’ve never been particularly shy about who or what they are, but like the Strokes today, something about them has always reeked of privilege, something quite at odds with the spirit of punk.

In my opinion, Green Day is in many ways the Puff Daddy of the world of punk, albeit, much more clever in terms of writing and tunefulness, but pretenders nonetheless. They may write catchy songs and offer clever observations on suburban boredom and apathy, but the true spirit of punk, born of The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, and The Clash, and nobly carried on in the nihilism of Black Flag and the broken home antics of NOFX, has always been firmly out of their reach, tattoos and bad attitudes or not. People who live a “punk rock lifestyle” don’t listen to Green Day. Kids who live in the safety and predictability of the suburbs do.

Having written all this, and hearing their newest release, American Idiot, I am willing to gallantly proclaim, all bets on Green Day’s past are now off.

Green Day’s American Idiot is hands down the best album of 2004. There is not one album this year that is even half as good as this one. Every time I listen to it I am blown away by the depth of the music and lyrics, and each time I find striking nuances to the arrangements or message and gain a new found respect for the cohesiveness of this, the most ambitious album I have heard in a very, very long time.

Numerous artists have tried their hand at capturing what it is like living in this irony soaked, post September 11^th Era of Fear that currently dominates life in America, circa 2004. But almost no one has so accurately captured the disparate feelings of rage, confusion, and hope as well as Green Day does with American Idiot. Who would’ve thought that the band best known for songs about smoking up and masturbating in the bedroom would turn out to be the clearest voice of the current generation of the disillusioned?

American Idiot is a punk rock concept album; something that I believe has never been done before. Bands such as The Who, Pink Floyd, and Queensryche have all been successful with their own concept albums, and the former two are surely inspirations here, but in my opinion, none of their works are as diverse as this one. Not even close. Now that may come off as a very bold statement, and it is, but then again, this is a very bold album, so bold in fact, that I wouldn’t be surprised if over the years, this gains more and more critical acclaim until it finally achieves its rightful status as a masterpiece.

The story of American Idiot revolves around a character named St. Jimmy and a girl referred to solely as Whatsername. The terrain of St. Jimmy’s life is filled with the conflicting images from the media, religion, corporate programming, shopping malls, suburbia, and disaffection that are so common place in this Age of Paranoia. The music that accompanies these images ebbs and flows, from the slow and contemplative (Whatsername, Wake Me Up When September Ends) to hard edged classic punk (Letterbomb, American Idiot), from arena anthems (Are We the Waiting) to unabashed pop (Give Me Novacaine, Blvd. of Broken Dreams), and sometimes do so within the same song. The stand out tracks on this album are many, with only perhaps three or so not quite reaching the heights of the others. My favorite is Holiday, an ode to rebellion in the era of the Patriot Act and Preemptive War, but perhaps the most important songs (and surely the most innovative) are the two four part suites (Jesus of Suburbia and Homecoming), which throw at the listener such a varied palette of sounds and images that they truly must be heard to be believed. This is a difficult album that becomes ever more impressive the more spins you give it and ultimately holds together as a unique and inspirational piece by a band that has finally come of age.

When people ask me if American Idiot is as good as Dookie, all I can do is nod my head, smile, and tell them to pick themselves up a copy and give it a listen. There really isn’t any more I can tell them to express just how powerful this music is. Only by you listening to this album from start to finish and then doing it all over again can I truly get across the importance and greatness of American Idiot. Suffice it for me to say, this is the most powerful, emotional album I have heard since September 11^th, and in my humble opinion, is unequivocally the very best CD of 2004, and perhaps will become in the future, my very favorite album of all-time.