Green Day "American Idiot" (2004) - got it
The story goes that Green Day had recorded an album which was to continue the expansion of their musical palette that had been going on in their
previous album "Warning". The recordings were stolen and the band
decided started from scratch. Realistically they had backups and could
have recreated the music. It was more likely it just wasn't quite up
to scratch, but it makes a for better story to say the theft led to
reinvention.
The band took the opportunity to try something different; a punk-rock
opera. There does seem to be a lyrical connection, and the album's two
medley pieces "Jesus of Surburbia"
and "Homecoming" feed into that conceit. I've never really paid too
much attention to that side of things but the album does have a certain
cohesion to it, even as it mashes punk rock (the title track and "Saint Jimmy")
with an almost 1950s sound on the verses of "Give Me Novocaine" and
stadium-sized sound on songs like "We are the Waiting" or ballad "Wake
Me When September Ends".
The song that seized me pretty early on was "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" with it's tremolo-drenched alt-rock balladry. I hate the radio would often play a version where they shave off the instrumental outro, as though it was unworthy because it
didn't have a human voice on it (probably just considered too long for
the radio) it's one of my favourite parts of the song.
The album was also seemingly one of the few mainstream releases making
any effort to criticise the US invasion of Iraq (the sequel).
Definitely throwing a title like "American Idiot" at a highly patriotic
nation like the US was a reasonably punk-rock thing to do.
American Idiot ended up being a shot in the arm for Green Day, setting
their direction for the next few years, leading to a live album, a
documentary, and even a stage musical.
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