~21st Century Breakdown goes platinum in the UK but is not as successful as American Idiot.

~There are so many reviews of 21stCB, but this is a good one. “Billie Joe Armstrong is one of his generation’s best songwriters.”

~21st Century Breakdown has been certified gold (500,000 copies sold in the U.S.). The press release includes a large, high quality image of the album art.

Warner Music did a promotional campaign in Australia for 21st Century Breakdown, and they hired a company to put up graffiti around Sydney with the album’s artwork, which drew criticism from the city and from local commentators. But the most direct criticism is from a graffiti artist, who spray painted the words “Cash Cow” on one of the images.

I’m sure the members of Green Day had nothing to do with the campaign, and none of the criticism is aimed specifically at them. But the issue points out the fundamental problem of having something that is genuine (the band and their music) in the hands of an entity (a huge corporation like Warner Music) that treats everything they control as a means to make money, without a real understanding of and respect for the genuine, real-life inspirations that contributed to its creation.

Graffiti is mentioned several times in the album’s lyrics as a fundamental yearning to declare one’s existence. “You blast your name in graffiti on the walls.” “She puts her make up on like graffiti on the walls of the heartland.” It’s a way of crying out “I am here!” in a visceral and very public way. Graffiti has always been a way for people who are invisible in society to — literally — make their mark. It’s especially important in a society like ours, where if you have a lot of money you can scream out your advertising messages on huge billboards, but if you’re just a poor working class stiff you face huge penalties just for hanging up a flyer on a telephone pole.

It’s pretty galling when a corporation appropriates something that has meaning for people, something whose popularity has been spread by people marginalized by society at considerable risk to themselves. The corporation just piggybacked on the street cred earned by graffiti artists with their own efforts, and exploited it as a marketing gimmick to make some cash.

Like I said, this is not a criticism of the band. But when they signed to a major label, this is the kind of thing that punks were very wary of. It just comes with the territory, I guess.

When it comes to Green Day graffiti, this is more to my liking… (thanks to Diana for sending it in).

One of the things I love most about 21st Century Breakdown is that it doesn’t quite fit in my head. I’ve listened to it over and over and I still find myself surprised. At first I thought it was weird and a little too hopeless. Then I realized that Green Day had done it again. They had put words to the vague uneasy feelings floating around in my head. It’s as if they knew what I was thinking even before I did. It’s a strange world we live in now, caught between hope and a sense of impending disaster. We aren’t used to this kind of tightrope. But Green Day hasn’t lost their fighting spirit, and neither should we.

I was listening to “21 Guns” today when I noticed the coursing energy of the guitar and drums under what I thought was a really sad song. The music was fighting back against the despair even as it expressed it. I think that’s the most important thing to remember when the world is going to hell. You don’t have to stand for it, but neither do you have to pretend it isn’t happening. In the end life doesn’t make any sense no matter what direction it’s taking. This album full of mariachi band-infused songs and complex arrangements is a perfect reflection of the way things can change instantly. It helps clear some of the clutter we accumulate around ourselves. What’s left really is a breakdown. People have lost their homes and the government has taken over in ways the happy haze of the 90s could never have predicted. It’s funny how often ideas that start out seeming crazy end up making perfect sense.

21st Century Breakdown takes a little more getting used to than American Idiot did. It doesn’t seem to tell people what they want to hear, because there is no one figure or institution to use as a target of the blame. It can’t be interpreted in so straightforward a fashion. I think that’s precisely the point. Where American Idiot identified clear sources of problems and tried to imagine a solution, 21st Century Breakdown wades farther in to find that this is much more complicated than we thought. It isn’t about small town dreams and finding your way anymore. It’s abound finding your way in a world tilted widely on its axis. The rules have changed. Luckily we always have Green Day to help us puzzle it out. It’s going be a hell of a ride.

P.S. I’m going to be at the Madison Square Garden show on July 27th, up in section 420 something. If you’re around too, wave at the specks on the ceiling. One of them is bound to be me :).

~MTV has a nice wrap up to celebrate today’s release of 21st Century Breakdown, with quotes from the band explaining the songs and how they came about.

Larry Livermore, the founder of Lookout Records and arguably the person who gave Green Day their first break by signing them to Lookout, wrote a wonderful piece about the band and the new album. [Via GD.com]

It’s so refreshing to read an essay by someone whose attitude is not, “Gee they were some dumb band who sang about masturbation, and look, they made a great album. Who woulda thunk?” Livermore, and he’s someone who would know, makes no bones about saying that Green Day has always been great. It’s in their blood. Their commitment to music and to its artistry and craftsmanship has always been unshakable, from the very first songs they put out when they were only 16.

Larry says he’s not a classic rock kind of guy. I’m not normally a classic rock kind of gal either. In fact I quite dislike classic rock, and probably not for the same reasons as Larry Livermore, who is himself a musician and presumably can understand the subtleties of many genres of music in ways that I cannot. I usually can’t appreciate it because it’s not direct in the way that punk rock is. And yet with 21st Century Breakdown, which is not at all simple or straightforward but is rich with nuances and changes, I find myself loving it more with every listen. Somehow Green Day crafted an album that is both complex and direct. It’s full of artistry and beauty but it also grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go.

Larry writes:

This is music for the ages. All the songs about girls are still out there, and will be as thrilling and enjoyable to listen to as they always were, but this is a band who have grown up without growing old, who positively inspire me with their ability to transcend all the depressing and corrupting influences of pop culture in general and the music business in particular to produce far and away the best work of their career.

The old songs are wonderful, and if it’s possible their new songs are even more wonderful. It’s a daunting feat. Will Green Day ever cease to amaze us?

[By the way, if you want to read the entire 2001 interview that Livermore quotes from, it’s here.]

~Listen to 21st Century Breakdown on Rhapsody. Listen in Australia, UK.

~Green Day’s “Know Your Enemy” has shot up from 8th to number one on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart.

~The four bonus tracks (screencap) for 21st Century Breakdown available on iTunes will be covers: “A Quick One While He’s Away” (by The Who), “Another State of Mind” (by Social Distortion), “That’s Alright Mama” (by Elvis), and “Like a Rolling Stone” (by Bob Dylan). As you will remember, the Foxboro Hots Tubs performed “A Quick One While He’s Away” in their live shows. [Via GDA]

There are two good new articles out on Green Day, one is a short blurb from Female First that is the reaction of a happy, excited fan, and Times Online has a long, thoughtful piece in which the band was interviewed, and they got the guys’ own angst and excitement about putting their “baby” out for all to hear.

It’s been a bit frustrating for me personally to read so many headlines lately saying, “Billie Joe says the album nearly killed him!” and “Billie Joe is a fan of Robert Pattinson!” So it’s a relief to read an article about the seriousness of purpose that Green Day puts into everything they do. Times Online writes:

The album is a masterpiece because it realises its ambitions. Musically, it may honour and channel the spirits of the Who, Bowie, Queen, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Clash, to breathtaking, to thrilling effect. Lyrically, it may succeed in capturing the contradictions, vulnerabilities and longing for harmony that thrum through Armstrong, Dirnt and Cool, their country, and humanity as a whole. But its real triumph, in an age of trimming, of market testing, of self-censorship and lowest common denominators, is not simply to aim insanely high, but to make it to the summit.

It’s a credit to Green Day that they can generate so many different kinds of excitement about their work, from the lowbrow and tabloidish to the delighted gushing of adoring fans, to the thoughtfulness of serious critics and commentators. I’m not sure if it’s exactly true that Billie Joe is “now regarded as a spokesman for an alternative American dream,” as the Times writes. The reaction to the political content of Green Day’s work is sometimes the hardest to see, among all the other verbiage floating around.

I myself am of two minds. I love that Green Day has a strong political message, one that I think is very necessary in our times, and I find myself wishing it would get more attention, but I can also completely relate to the words on Female First: “Know Your Enemy blends their usual political lyrics with a pop-punk beat that leaves you leaping around the room like a complete fool. There are no words to describe how sound this ‘comeback’ single is, and how pleased the fans who have waited so long for this will be, I could rant and rave about it all day - but I’ll just say this, Billie Joe, Tre Cool and Mike Dirnt are back; and they’re still fu**ing awesome.”

I’ll admit that the video for “Know Your Enemy” — which I loved for its visual simplicity: evocative images interspersed with footage of the band singing and pounding their hearts out, and no silly gimmicks — had me leaping around like a complete fool, but it also made me want to go out and march in the streets in outrage at the mess that our politicians and their corporate cronies have left us in. MTV Buzzworthy was one of the few outlets that talked about the political message of the song:

The enemy is your instinct to go along quietly in the name of comfort. Green Day [have] written a rallying cry, reminding the world that it wasn’t a president that put us where we are. It was our own silent apathy. And on top of that, no president — no matter how inspiring — can get us out of our mess if we continue to choose complacency over responsibility.

But when the author added, “Course all that’s just one man’s opinion. What do you think?” no one took him up on trying to answer his question.

I suppose the answer is slightly complicated, because Green Day are not and never have been up on a soapbox. They write from their gut, and everything they say comes out of their personal feelings. This song, and the album as a whole, is not exactly a call to arms, because they would never be so presumptuous as to tell other people what to do. The rallying cry is there, but it’s from one band’s perspective. The hard work of figuring out what each of should do is left wide open, and Green Day generously and openly includes the option of enjoying the thrill of the music and leaping around like a delightedly happy fool.

~You can listen to the b-side “Lights Out” for “Know Your Enemy” from the German single on GDA or 1039Sweet Children.

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Related posts:
Listen to the B-side “Hearts Collide” from “Know Your Enemy”

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