In defence of Green Day album ’21st Century Breakdown’
Every band that releases a classic record usually has to deal with the problem of following it up. Despite having a crowned jewel in one’s discography, there’s usually a mantle of pressure that comes afterwards, as bands wonder how they will create anything that comes close to what they had already done. And as the 2000s got underway, Green Day was given the task of having to follow up on one of the biggest concept albums of the decade.
After American Idiot took off, Green Day was heralded as one of the leading figures in pop-punk again, with fans flocking to songs like ‘Holiday’ and ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’. When the band focused on making a worthy follow-up, though, there were a handful of fans who couldn’t help but feel short-changed by 21st Century Breakdown.
Compared to the massive impact that American Idiot created, Green Day’s decision to work with production genius Butch Vig provided mixed results. While the album was one of the most refined the band had made in years, the polish of the record didn’t sit well with fans who preferred the raw sound of Green Day. Since the rest of the album also marked a change in the group’s usual style, it wasn’t long before punk diehards began to cry “sell out” all over again.
When taken outside the context of what punk rock is “supposed” to be, 21st Century Breakdown may be one of the best albums that Green Day would ever make. Certainly their most ambitious, as Billie Joe Armstrong strove to make a record that could be a worthy companion piece to American Idiot, complete with a revamped story about the characters Christian and Gloria.
While the previous album had episodic songs that went on for nine minutes at a time, the narrative in this record is broken up into different suites spread out across three sections of the record. Even though there wasn’t an apparent cohesion from one song to the next, that gave the rest of the group wiggle room to take a few chances.
Compared to their usual sound, this record features the prettiest Green Day songs committed to tape. Using their budget to their advantage, tracks like ‘Last Night on Earth’ are almost Beatlesque in their construction, as Armstrong writes a touching love letter from the perspective of a soldier pining for home.
Even though the tone isn’t centred on strictly punk rock this time, there are still tracks that hit like a sledgehammer, regardless. With its swinging rhythm and acoustic guitar strumming, ‘Peacemaker’ provides a bit of relentless energy from Armstrong, coupled with Mike Dirnt’s fantastic bass line. The punk rock songs still haven’t gone anywhere, either, with ‘Christian’s Inferno’ being one of the heaviest tracks of the band’s 2000s era and ‘East Jesus Nowhere’ being a scathing indictment of organised religion.
There are also a few songs that reach heights that even Armstrong probably didn’t think they would reach at the time. Compared to the usual ballads that would come earlier in their career, ‘Restless Heart Syndrome’ is a sonic juggernaut of a tune that goes beyond any standard punk rock fare. Bringing in pianos and acoustic guitars, the song builds to a glorious climax over Armstrong’s story about recognising the enemy in the mirror before the enemies on the outside.
While songs like ‘21 Guns’ tended to be hit-and-miss for some people, even those songs would get revamped when the American Idiot musical started to gain traction. Though Armstrong’s vocal performance on the recorded version may have been a touch lacklustre, hearing him alongside the best singers on Broadway gave the track a real shot in the arm, bringing the right kind of melodrama to a song about suffering and defeat.
Regardless of what their background may have implied, 21st Century Breakdown stands as Armstrong’s bid to put himself among the greatest songwriters in classic rock history, and more often than not, he succeeds with flying colours. After all, the punk rock ethos was about going against the grain, and when the rest of the group’s fanbase wanted them to stay the same, Green Day’s decision to go in the opposite direction was the most punk rock thing they could have done.
