1002. Green Day - American Idiot (2004)

Track Listing

1. American Idiot
2. Jesus Of Surburbia
3. Holiday
4. Boulevard Of Broken Dreams
5. Are We The Waiting
6. St Jimmy
7. Give Me Novacaine
8. She's A Rebel
9. Extraordinary Girl
10. Letterbomb
11. Wake Me Up When September Ends
12. Homecoming
13. Whatsername

Review

So we're down to the updates from the new edition of the 1001 albums. This will take us up to 1021 albums. First let's talk about the albums which were taken out of the list. There's a bunch that really should not have been taken out, these are: Hives – Your New Favourite Band, Radiohead – Hail to the Thief, Calexico – Feast of Wire, Wilson, Brian – SMiLE, Libertines – Libertines, MIA – Arular, Beck – Guero and White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan. Everything else I can do without. I find it really lazy of them to limit the update to albums from 2003 onwards, there's plenty of stuff back there that could have been taken out much more easily, and I'm thinking of the late 90s in particular.

That being said here's an album which although not bad is definitely unworthier than plenty of those taken out. Although quite a good nu-punk album making a good use of its concept and with a few great tracks it is still slightly annoying tween crap.

That being said there are some impressive moments here like Jesus of Suburbia, actually it is on the longer tracks that Green Day do their best, in the suite-like pieces they really sound like a band on top of their game. Actually the singles (of which three here were big successes) are pretty misrepresentative of the album altough they do work in context. So if you want some acceptable nu-punk this is the place to go... but why would you want to?

Track Highlights

1. Jesus of Suburbia
2. Homecoming
3. Extraordinary Girl
4. Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

One day, bassist Mike Dirnt was in the studio recording a 30-second song by himself. Armstrong decided he wanted to do the same, and drummer Tré Cool followed suit. Armstrong recalled, "It started getting more serious as we tried to outdo one another. We kept connecting these little half-minute bits until we had something." This musical suite became "Homecoming", and the band subsequently wrote another suite, "Jesus of Suburbia". Armstrong was so emboldened by the creation of the two suites that he decided to make the record an album-long conceptual piece. The band took inspiration from concept records by The Who, as well as musicals including West Side Story and Jesus Christ Superstar. During their sessions at Studio 880, the members of Green Day spent their days writing material and would stay up late, drinking and discussing music. The band set up a pirate radio station from which it would broadcast jam sessions, along with occasional crank calls.

This video makes me feel old: