Green Day - American Idiot
Green Day
American Idiot
Release Date: September 21st, 2004
Label: Reprise Records
Review by Jared Stossel.
By the early 2000s, things were different for Green Day. Their previous album, 2000’s divisive Warning, hadn’t met expectations amongst fans or critics, finding the three-piece band turning to folkier, power-pop driven entries. Sure, “Minority” would always be a big hit at the stadiums the band were starting to frequent, but it wasn’t hitting the same way. Bille Joe Armstrong, Mike Dirnt, and Tre Cool were all married. They had started families. The days of punk boredom and anarchistic flavor that once made them one of the most daring and fun bands in modern rock were…growing up. Upon taking a break and regrouping, the band got back into the studio to work on what would become known as the album Cigarettes and Valentines. You’ve all heard it, right? Oh wait, you haven’t. Because someone broke into the studio and stole the master tapes during the recording session. At this point, the band could either go back and rerecord everything, or start from scratch. The band opted to do the latter, so it was back to the drawing board
It was almost as if the master tapes being stolen for the first album was an event predetermined by the universe. Without the disappearance of those sessions, we wouldn’t have gotten American Idiot, a powerful force of nature, Green Day’s strongest album as a whole, and a record that vitalized a generation born into a world of unbridled political chaos. The hour-long concept album, produced once again by Rob Cavallo, follows the story of a character who is referred to as Jesus of Suburbia, an anti-hero that takes a journey outside the confines of his suburban wonderland to see what’s really out in the world. It’s a blistering rock opera that is not anti-American, but anti-war, anti-authoritarianism, and very anti-George W. Bush, shaped by the events of September 11th, 2001 and the following Iraq War.
For the first time, some could argue, in their entire career, Green Day finally had something to say that didn’t come from the imprisonment of boredom and anxiety. Instead of writing songs about reveling in the confines of your mind, smoking weed, and burning out, the band stepped outside of the neighborhood, got on a bus, and drove it into the city, reveling in all of its grime and conflict. The band crafted not songs, but punk rock suites, with some songs like “Jesus of Suburbia” and “Homecoming” being broken into chapters, bookending one another, with ten-minute segments that find the band at their absolute best.
On American Idiot, Green Day were ten steps ahead of the listener and were precise in the construction of the album; every song, lyric, and note is exactly where it’s supposed to be. They knew very well that writing the line “The subliminal mindfuck America”, placing the words “fuck” and “America” directly next to each other, was going to turn heads. The three-minute eponymous opener remains one of the band’s fiercest statements to this day (one of my favorite songs of all time) and, unfortunately, one that is still relevant in 2024.
American Idiot finds Armstrong in an extremely vulnerable place, interlacing personal tragedies into the character arcs of the rock opera. “Wake Me Up When September Ends” is particularly heart-wrenching, finding Armstrong reflecting on the passing of his father when he was ten years old. Green Day had written emotionally impactful songs before, with Nimrod’s “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)”, but this felt different. The world had changed, the band had changed, and the inclusion of songs like “September” and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” add an incredible new layer to the DNA of Green Day. The tremolo-driven opening notes of “Boulevard” still conjure up stadium roars, twenty years later, sending chills down the skin of anyone within earshot; despite not knowing exactly where the Jesus of Suburbia is heading towards on that road, we are inclined to follow.
It doesn’t matter where you are in the track listing of American Idiot, whether you’re leaving Suburbia for the city (“Holiday”), partying with the “suicide commando that your mama talked about (“St. Jimmy”), numbing the pain (“Give Me Novacaine”), unleashing your anger with the burning intensity of a thousand suns (maybe the album’s best song, “Letterbomb”), or reflecting on those that have come and gone from your life (“Whatsername)”, there’s no two ways about it: American Idiot is a bonafide masterpiece.
Twenty years later, its musings, style, and sound are still relevant. No one has ever really come close to imitating its sound or its scope. All these years later, hearing the words open guitar chords to “American Idiot” bring me right back to where I was when I first heard this album at twelve years old: intrigued, excited, and terrified all at the same time. In that moment, every Disney pop song I’d ever heard faded into obscurity. Goodbye, Lizzie McGuire; Hello, St. Jimmy.
