21st Century Breakdown Review

This review is going to be shit. I know this for a fact and I felt I should share it with you. You want to know why this review is going to suck? Alright then.

Fact: I don’t understand music. Tempo, pitch and all that other crazy stuff is as mythical to me as a sustained erection… I mean a unicorn.

Or possibly something less phallic.

Nevertheless, I am going to write a review of Green Day’s 21^st Century Breakdown and you are going to read it.

Maybe one of us can do the title justice.

21^st Century Breakdown is a sort-of follow up to 2004’s American Idiot, an album widely regarded as both the turning point in Green Day’s career (the band’s previous hits relating almost exclusively to introspective, masturbation obsessed, energy drink fuelled nerd punks. Myself included) and one of the most important socio-political commentaries of recent years (if you consider 2004 recent). American Idiot infused powerful chords and musical grandeur with angry, cynical and rage driven lyrics to astounding effect. It was and still is one of my favourite albums.

Not too easy to live up to then.

Capitalising upon American Idiot’s success with a quick, masturbation fuelled release would have been the economically sound thing to do. Oddly Green Day didn’t do that, instead deciding to leave fans in the dark for five years and occasionally releasing half-hearted covers of Clash and John Lennon songs (‘I fought the law’ and ‘Working Class Hero’ for those wondering) whilst secretly working on a new album. The end result is eighteen tracks of narrative driven, politically motivated pop punk under the title 21^st Century Breakdown.

I must admit that I was sceptical about this album when I heard the single, ‘Know Your Enemy’, for the first time. It’s not a bad song but it has very little to say beyond “apathy is bad”, didn’t seem to contribute to any larger plot and seemed musically reminiscent of the Dookie era. Basically it was a regression into the tired and tested Green Day formula, which is by no means a bad thing, but hardly seems like a good thing after American Idiot.

Luckily the album isn’t a regression in any way, instead managing to carve a narrative on a par with some of the finest literature out there through it’s eighteen tracks. Unlike American Idiot, 21^st Century Breakdown doesn’t underplay Billie Joe’s now obvious intelligence in order to make itself accessible to the people his political agenda is targeting. Instead it makes you work to fully understand the narrative with clever, almost sardonic references to various cultural icons (for want of the most obvious example: if ‘Christian’s Inferno’ isn’t a direct reference to Dante’s epic allegory of the same name then the world has gone insane).

Thankfully, not only is the narrative a genuinely good concept, this time around Green Day have allowed themselves to do it justice with songs which match it’s grandeur musically. Unlike in pretty much every other Green Day album ever, the band no longer rely on loud songs juxtaposed against understated melodic nightmares (reference point: ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’) instead opting to adopt a less progressive and generic album structure, and allowing each song to play it’s by itself and drawing it all together in the albums penultimate song: ‘American Eulogy’.

It would be an understatement to say that Green Day pushed themselves musically on this album. ‘21 Guns’ (my favourite song on the album) sees Billie Joe pushing his lyrical skills to the breaking point, ‘East Jesus Nowhere’ sounds more like The Clash than Green Day’s cover of ‘I fought the law’ did and every song in the album sounds fresh, interesting and genuinely like it’s part of a larger scheme. Apart from ‘Know Your Enemy’.

Which is really my only complaint; the single holds absolutely no purpose in the context or the rest of the album beyond a brief reference in ‘Restless Heart Syndrome’. It’s not like none of the other songs can serve as singles, indeed the album is literally designed so that you can skip tracks and still understand the overall message at the end. I can think of three tracks which would make better singles off the top of my head anyway: ’21 Guns’, ‘The Static Age’ and ‘East Jesus Nowhere’. I suppose I can forgive the inclusion of the song though, if only because it’ll draw in the Dookie crowd and teach them that political motivation did not make Green Day shit.

I think I’m done. That wasn’t so bad was it?

You bleeding much?

10/10