Green Day

Led by the killer title track, American Idiot finds Green Day sounding as vital as ever. Told through the character "Jesus of Suburbia," the concept album, released just prior to the 2004 presidential election, is nourished by the trio's vitriol over America's political climate and overall malaise. Rock-opera riffs complement instantly gratifying pop hooks that extend well beyond the band's punk roots. Even when they slow it down they still pack a punch. The album won a Grammy for Best Rock Album and reignited the band's flagging career all while spreading its message far and wide.

Tell the truth: did anybody think Green Day would still be around in 2004? Ten years ago,
when they blew up into the hot summer band of 1994, they were snotty little Berkeley,
California, punk kids who sounded ready to pogo off the face of the earth in three-chord
tantrums such as "Basket Case." Between Billie Joe Armstrong's adenoidal snarl and Tre
Cool's maniac drums, Green Day seemed like a Saturday-morning-cartoon versio... More >

If you're wondering what this concept album means, don't labor over the lyric booklet. As Billie Joe knows even if he doesn't come out and say it--he doesn't come out and say lots of obvious stuff--this is a visual culture. So examine the cover. That red grenade in the upraised fist? It's also a heart--a bleeding heart. Which he heaves as if it'll explode, only it won't, because he doesn't have what it takes to pull the pin. The emotional travails of two clueless punks--one passive, one aggressive, both projections of the auteur--stand in for the sociopolitical content that the vague references to Bush, Schwarzenegger, and war (not any special war, just war) are thought to indicate. There's no economics, no race, hardly any compassion. Joe name-checks America as if his hometown of Berkeley was in the middle of it, then name-checks Jesus as if he's never met anyone who's attended church. And to lend his maunderings rock grandeur, he ties them together with devices that sunk under their own weight back when the Who invented them. Sole rhetorical coup: makes being called a "f*gg*t" something to aspire to, which in this terrible time it is. (Grade - C+)