Most Disappointing Music of 2009! Number 5!

5. Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown

I have vague memories from high school about American Idiot being a huge deal. In my mind, it’s linked with the only pieces of protest I remember participating in – playing music in support of a teacher’s strike and some sort of unfocused protest against combat in Afghanistan. Or possibly against the Iraq War. It’s a sad statement about the time period that I can’t remember the particulars of these events. Was American Idiot even out?

Find out after the break!



Lemme check. American Idiot came out in 2004, so probably not. Not for the teacher’s strike at least. I’m not going to go into the fact that Green Day was pretty tame compared to bands like Rage Against the Machine and, uh, System of a Down (I guess. But even they never seemed all that protest-y. I think we latched onto the fact that most of the band came from unspecified Middle Eastern countries. Not that any of us bothered to find out which ones. But I’ve strayed far from the topic). In any case, to us sheep-like suburban high school kids, Green Day in 2004 was like “Blowin’ in the Wind”-era Dylan. And then they tried it again five years later.

The first thing I remembered thinking after I heard 21st Century Breakdown all the way through was: “This would have been way more powerful a year or two ago, or if McCain had won the election.” The whole thing felt like a protest album that had misplaced the subject it was protesting against. This might get a little meta and paranoid, but it was almost like the record company was holding back the album, waiting to see if current events would line back up so the American Idiot lightning would strike again. They were hoping for that perfect fission of political nincompoopery, widespread adolescent discontent, and societal out-lashing from the youth, but they waited too long.

As for the music itself, Green Day moved closer to the dangerously unprofitable (for a “punk” band anyway) concept album threshold. American Idiot told a coherent story with identifiable characters, but at the same time, musically, the songs stood up on their own. 21st Century Breakdown edged closer to the C.A.T. and ended up with the exact opposite result: weaker songs telling an unfocused story with sketchy characters.

The album’s songs don’t stand up on their own. They don’t have the rawness and strength of older (pre-American Idiot) Green Day and they don’t have the story cohesion that American Idiot’s songs did. The songs are supposed to tell the story of our heroes, Christian and Gloria, two idealistic young people who are lashing out against… something. Probably Bush, or at least Bush-style Republican policies. Wikipedia says it’s Bush (the May 19, 2009 release date reinforces my earlier point about missing their target).  But the songs never really give the listener a good sense of who Christian and Gloria are, what they’re fighting for and what they hope to accomplish, and the challenges they face in trying to achieve their goals.

The songs skirt around these questions, telling us that Gloria is some sort of revolutionary, and Christian is trapped in some sort of religious dystopian version of America, but lacks the detail necessary to tell an actual story. For example, are Christian and Gloria together? Do they interact at all? What happens to Gloria between “Viva La Gloria!,” “Last of the American Girls” and “Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)”? Did the revolutionary fall from grace and adopt the consumerican (consumer/American, and damn, I thought I'd coined that) ideal? That’s my interpretation, anyway. Eventually I’m going to write up my own interpretation of the ‘story’, but until then enjoy this guy’s thoughts.

I admit that as time went by, some of the songs started to grow on me. Green Day has become too good at making really palatable songs. A lot of them do nothing for me, either because they rely on each other too strongly (without really saying anything new) or just not to my taste. My favorites so far are: “Last of the American Girls,” “?Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl),” “21 Guns,” and “See the Light.” Interestingly, only the first one really sounds like a “punk” song. The rest are quality rock/pop. 21st Century Breakdown isn’t really a bad album, but I had been hoping that Green Day had updated their rhetoric a little.