Green Day Discussion

[ïʼnčrεdiвl]

I really think that this could be their best CD ever and I own American Idiot, Warning, Nimrod, and Dookie, so while I don't know all of their work, I know a good chunk, and I'm really having high expectations from them!

Is May 8th going to be the official release date?

[blurple]

Feb 10, 2009 20:05:54 GMT -5 Minimalism said:

Is that an official cover? It's pretty awesome.

Yeah I like it a lot too.

[when the pawn...]

They seem to have gotten VERY pretentious with this one but it sounds awesome anyway. I just finished listening to American Idiot all the way through for the first time in a while and WOW...it's an awesome album - it so deserved Album of the Year over Ray Charles.

[Deleted]

Billie Joe turns 37 today.

[ïʼnčrεdiвl]

getting old there... lol.

[Ryan]

it's not posted yet so...

First Listen: Green Day Revive Dramatic Political Punk on “21st Century Breakdown”
2/11/09, 6:10 pm EST
www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/02/11/first-listen-green-day-revive-dramatic-political-punk-on-21st-century-breakdown/


Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown won’t land in stores until May, but Rolling Stone scored an early listen to six tracks this afternoon — and confirmed that the trio will kick off a massive world tour of indoor arenas in July. A full in-the-studio report by David Fricke will hit newsstands in our next issue, but here’s a sneak peek at what Billie Joe Armstrong, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt have been cooking up with legendary producer Butch Vig at the same California studio they recorded the Grammy-winning American Idiot, Warning, Insomniac and Dookie. (Take a look back at Green Day’s career in photos, the Build Up to the Breakdown.)

As previously reported, the 16-track album is broken into three acts — Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints, and Horseshoes and Handgrenades — and Dirnt told AP magazine that the songs “speak to each other the way the songs on [Bruce Springsteen’s] Born to Run speak to each other. I don’t know if you’d call it a ‘concept album,’ but there’s a thread that connects everything.” The songs are defiant, but also defiantly hopeful, referencing the unsettled political climate as well as more personal and generational turmoils. Its blend of claustrophobia, freedom and urgency is well illustrated by the album’s cover art, which depicts a tight shot of a young couple kissing against a graffiti-covered wall.

The title track quickly kicks into a familiar Green Day three-chord blast, but morphs into multiple movements like some of the more rock-opera-heavy numbers on American Idiot. “My generation is zero/I never made it as a working class hero,” Armstrong sings, making a reference to the John Lennon track the band covered in 2007. After a big drum breakdown, the song winds into a slower “Bohemian Rhapsody” moment. By contrast, “Know Your Enemy” is a straight-ahead rock song with a chanty “oh-way-oh-way” refrain. Opening powerfully like an AC/DC track, Cool drums furiously as Armstrong sings “Silence is the enemy so give me revolution.”

“Before the Lobotomy” is one of a handful of Breakdown tracks where Armstrong breaks into an uncharacteristically sweet singing voice and voyages into his limber upper register. Lyrics are answered by darts of guitar, and the band inserts pauses and breathing room between the music and vocals. At first Armstrong sings of “dreaming of another place and time where my family are from” but as the song progresses he’s pointing a finger at “Charlatans of lost memories like the end of the century.”

“March of the Dogs” is the most punky and overtly political of the six tracks. Built on big punches of guitar and classic shout and response vocals, Armstrong spits, “I want to know who’s allowed to breed/All the dogs who never learned to read/Missionaries, politicians/And the cops of a new religion.” It’s a biting indictment of contemporary religion that starts intense and never lets up, even for a marching-drum bridge.

Armstrong’s serene vocals reappear on the mid-tempo rocker “Restless Heart Syndrome.” Returning to the line “know your enemy,” Billie Joe advises, “Know what ails you/impales you… you’re a victim of the system.” The track takes a dramatic kick into its loud section, and its neat four-chord structure turns on a minor note. And “21 Guns” has a dash of “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” to it — the track opens slowly with acoustic guitar, adding piano and other instruments until it opens up into a big, lush, super-melodic chorus. “Lay down your arms, give up the fight,” Armstrong croons. “Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I.” After a quick guitar solo and what sounds like a few pretty lines of harmonium, the song concludes with a hopeful finality.

[busyboy]

The title track leaked.

[Deleted]

The album release has been postponed to May 19.

[busyboy]

Release date pushed up to Friday, May 15.

[areyoureadytojump]

Billboard.com:

Green Day's "21st Century Breakdown" is due May 15.

March 25, 2009 09:55 AM ET

David J. Prince, N.Y.

Green Day will release its eighth studio album, "21st Century Breakdown," on Friday, May 15, the group announced today.

The long-awaited album, Green Day's first full length since 2004's "American Idiot," is produced by Butch Vig, known for his work with Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and his own band Garbage.

Like its predecessor, "21st Century Breakdown" has a narrative structure, telling the story of a young couple, Christian and Gloria. The album is divided into three acts -- "Heroes and Cons," "Charlatans and Saints" and "Horseshoes and Handgrenades" -- and includes tracks like "21 Guns," "East Jesus Nowhere," "Before the Lobotomy," and "Restless Heart Syndrome."

The first single, "Know Your Enemy," will go on sale digitally in April.

Last month, Billboard previewed six songs from "Breakdown." "Know Your Enemy" is a sturdy, catchy rock cut demanding "revolution," while "Before the Lobotomy" begins as an acoustic wash before shifting into a heavy three-chord riff and lyrics dripping with antipathy: "I'm not stoned / I'm just f*cked up."

The album's title track, an ultra-melodic midtempo rocker with Green Day's familiar three-chord verses and Billie Joe Armstrong's summation of society: "My generation is zero / I'd never make it as a working class hero."


Green Day will begin a North American arena tour in early July, to be followed by shows in Europe. In 2010, the band will hit Japan, Southeast Asia and South America before returning for more North American shows.

[sunpeach]

Well, I heard the title song, "21st Century Breakdown" it's a bloated whiny track that seems like a reject from "American Idiot." This CD is seeming like it could just be like "American Idiot" but part 2. I hope the rest is better. Billie Joe said he has been studying the Beatles and others about song structure. Maybe he should look at their CD track record. No Beatles album five years apart is anything like each other- they progressed and lennon actually quit because he thought they were stagnating. I hope the rest of it is better than what I'm hearing.

[Active Aggressive]

No love for this?? Rolling Stone gave it 4 stars!

[when the pawn...]

I've only heard KYE but I'm waiting til the release to listen. I'm very very very excited. BTW, RS gave it 4.5/5!

Is it being released 5/12 or 5/15? Most people here say 5/15 but Rockonthenet.com says 5/12.

[@DiegoMarcondes_]

21 Guns has leaked



Also leaked more 5 new tracks but I've just find this on youtube

[@DiegoMarcondes_]

THE ALBUM HAS LEAKED!

[@DiegoMarcondes_]

Here's a link to stream

www.myspace.com/greendaybrasil

[@DiegoMarcondes_]

WOOOOOOOOW

One of the best albums of the year so far!

Before the Lobomoty and Last Night on Earth are GREAT!

I love all tracks!!!

[CammyCan]

I am LOVING this album. Not up to American Idiot standards yet, but a really solid follow up effort imo.

[CammyCan]

Also, could a mod please change the "2009 New Album" to "21st Century Breakdown" please? Thanks!

[Deleted]

I am really enjoying their new album!

[areyoureadytojump]

Green Day gets conceptual again on latest disc

by John Kosik, Associated Press Writer – Mon May 11, 3:18 pm ET

Green Day, "21st Century Breakdown" (Warner Bros.)

If you thought Green Day couldn't be any more ambitious than their Grammy-winning 2004 disc "American Idiot," well, you'd be wrong — in a very big way.

The political "punk opera" approach taken by Billie Joe Armstrong (vocals, guitars), Mike Dirnt (bass, vocals) and Tre Cool (drums) on "AI" seemed at first a bit heady for a punk trio.

Fans thought otherwise, and the band has again gone with a highbrow concept on their eighth studio outing, "21st Century Breakdown."

While "AI" damned the Bush administration and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, "21st Century Breakdown" attempts to recap the new millennia thus far through the eyes of Christian and Gloria, a pair trying to find their place in a decaying world.

Armstrong breathes life into the hopes and fears of two young adults in post-9/11 America, pushing us to the brink of collapse before a hopeful appeal for healing and restoration.

The music for the most part is typical Green Day — power chords and pop harmonies — but their recent trend of infusing Beatles-esque piano, acoustic and orchestral elements continues to bulk up their sound.

The disc is meant to be taken as a whole, with one theme blending into another, but it isn't conceptual to the point where it can't be taken in pieces — most of which are very strong.

The title track pulsates with a deft time change, "Viva La Gloria!" and its sister track, "Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)," each open softly before shifting into power pop delights, and "Murder City" provides a straight up punk rock kick.

"The Static Age" handily shouts down our overstimulated consumer culture, "Christian's Inferno" drives with a fuzzed-up bass, and the two-part "American Eulogy (Mass Hysteria/Modern World)" tackles class warfare before disc closer "See The Light" simply states, "I need to know what's worth the fight."

After kickstarting their career in 1994 with a juvenile ode to masturbation, some may have thought Green Day wasn't capable of anything more. "21st Century Breakdown" proves what a misguided notion underestimation can be.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: "Restless Heart Syndrome" soars with acoustic guitars and driving piano, touching on youthful substance abuse as an escape from the horrors of the real world.

[Active Aggressive]

I am buying the Best Buy exclusive Deluxe edition to make up for the fact that I didn't buy AI. Very impressed with the few clips I have heard. I like Green Day ballads mostly but I like their hard stuff too, for the most part.

[TroublemakerOlly]

Available on iTunes NOW!!

[EPG]

The album is only $5.00 on Amazon MP3 Store!

[jenglisbe]

May 13, 2009 11:41:32 GMT -5 Active Aggressive said:

I am buying the Best Buy exclusive Deluxe edition to make up for the fact that I didn't buy AI. Very impressed with the few clips I have heard. I like Green Day ballads mostly but I like their hard stuff too, for the most part.

What does the Deluxe Edition add?

[areyoureadytojump]

Out today in the USA!

Best Buy: $9.99 (LE w/ 52-page book with lyrics $16.99)

[Deleted]

Slant gave the album 2/5.

Follow-ups to staggeringly successful albums are a queer animal. A lot of bands use the opportunity to indulge personal, idiosyncratic pursuits—like a covers album of obscure childhood favorites. Rarely do bands attempt to precisely duplicate whatever synergies led to their initial success, because, well, that's just folly. Lightning doesn't strike the same buying public twice. But Green Day, always audacious, chose just that strategy. Three years after the commercial runaway train of American Idiot, they offer 21st Century Breakdown, and it's a lot like the Danny DeVito to American Idiot's Arnold Schwarzenegger: They came from the same parents, but one was clearly blessed with superior genes.

Having grown accustomed to outsized stadium shows, Green Day continues to peddle unsubtle pop-punk grandiosity, musically and philosophically blunt enough to reach the back rows. The album is constructed around a three-act narrative that follows prototypical teenage wastoids Christian and Gloria as they seek meaning and direction in a narcotized strip-mall America. The lyrical perspective shifts from an omniscient narrator offering warnings and words of encouragement to truculent first-person screeds, all of it adding up to a blustery jeremiad against...government? Authority? Apathy? It's a little ill-defined. We never learn much about the characters, save their vague disenfranchisement and fondness for cigarettes, so it appears the overly ambitious conceit serves mainly to allow for an exhausting 71-minute runtime. In 1999, NOFX—another snotty pop-punk band with surprising longevity—wrote a 20-minute song called "The Decline" that hammered home uniquely American hypocrisies at the intersection of the personal and the political and set it to blazing hardcore and proggy interludes—and it didn't take them two albums to do it. To his credit, Billie Joe Armstrong has a simply indefatigable sense of what makes a song catchy and high-energy, which is fortunate because if the tunes were any less ingratiating, this kind of empty rhetoric would be offensive.

For its oft-satisfying marriage of melodramatic ballads and larger-than-life bar chords, critics have compared 21st Century's musical eclecticism to Queen and Meatloaf. And it's true: Nearly every song opens with mournful crooning, blitzes through a few power-pop changeups, and ends in a bombastic display of Green Day's signature Ramones-meets-the-Who theatrics. Guitars are compressed within an inch of their life, courtesy of producer Butch Vig, effectively removing any character, save an imposing and immediate presence. Because many of the songs rely on abrupt dynamic 180s, it's easier to pick memorable parts than standout tracks. There's the Lennon-aping piano intro to "Last Night on Earth," and the Doors-aping cabaret stomp of "Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)." The otherwise tossed-off "Christian's Inferno" gives us a nigh-industrial bass/drums stampede that's the most aggressive Green Day has sounded since Insomniac's "Geek Stink Breath."

But an uncanny sense of familiarity hangs over too much of the album. The melodies of several tracks suggest ghosts of older Green Day songs. In particular, "East Jesus Nowhere" appropriates the chorus of "Welcome to Paradise" so baldy you have to wonder if it's an in-joke, and lead single "Know Your Enemy" exemplifies the worst aspects of the album: not catchy exactly, simply infectious and sloganeering, like a commercial jingle for itself that makes your liking it or not a moot point.

Maybe if you've heard one Green Day rock opera, you've heard them all. Anyone who owns American Idiot probably won't need its lesser twin, and those who steered clear won't come groveling for forgiveness. The first time around, the band's ire could be believed as an urgent response to the nightmare of the Bush era. But this retread comes across as a disingenuous move. "Desperate, but not hopeless," as Billy Joe describes his young protagonists, might as well describe Green Day as they release this album into an uncertain political and economic climate. The Us vs. Them ideological rug having been pulled out from under them with Barack Obama's victory, they seem doggedly insistent on clinging to the malaise Americans are attempting to shuffle off. We're entering a period marked by a sentiment more complex than lyrics like "Silence is the enemy, so gimme revolution" can summarize.

[mairy]

Spain is gettin' "21 Guns" as the first single. Looks like the biggest station didn't want to play "Know Your Enemy" and they switched it. Some other stations had already started playing "Know Your Enemy" but they will probably force them to change it too.

I hate when they do this. Los40 is the worst station ever.

[when the pawn...]

Just listened through for the first time - I LOVE IT! Time will tell if I prefer AI or 21CBD but this sounds awesome...I reallllllly wanna see them in Boston in July but not sure if I can.

[Active Aggressive]

May 15, 2009 11:07:14 GMT -5 jenglisbe said:

May 13, 2009 11:41:32 GMT -5 Active Aggressive said:

I am buying the Best Buy exclusive Deluxe edition to make up for the fact that I didn't buy AI. Very impressed with the few clips I have heard. I like Green Day ballads mostly but I like their hard stuff too, for the most part.

What does the Deluxe Edition add?

See the post below yours. It was worth it. It's a nice package.