Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown Album

21st Century Breakdown is the eighth studio album by American punk rock band Green Day, released through Reprise Records on May 15, 2009. It is the band's second rock opera, following American Idiot, and its first album to be produced by Butch Vig. Vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong described 21st Century Breakdown as a "snapshot of the era in which we live as we question and try to make sense of the selfish manipulation going on around us, whether it be the government, religion, media or frankly any form of authority."

The span of nearly five years between American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown was the longest gap between studio albums in Green Day's career. The band had been working on new material since January 2006. By October 2007, Armstrong had 45 songs written, but the band showed no further signs of progress until October 2008, when a video of the group recording with producer Butch Vig in the studio was posted on YouTube. The writing and recording process, spanning three years and four recording studios, was finally finished in April 2009.

The album received generally positive reception. 21st Century Breakdown achieved Green Day's best chart performance to date. Upon its release, 21st Century Breakdown reached number one on the album charts of at least 24 countries ". The album subsequently achieved number one on the Billboard 200, European Top 100 Albums and UK Albums Charts.

Writing and recording

Green Day's seventh album, American Idiot, was released in 2004 and immediately garnered the band much success. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling five million copies in the US, and was nominated for several awards, winning the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album. The thirteen-month-long tour for American Idiot ended in October 2005. In January 2006, the band began to write new songs for what would become their eighth album and the followup to American Idiot. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong said in a January 2006 interview with Billboard, "We'll start with silence, and that's how we'll be able to find the inspiration to find another record."

The band did not release any details of the writing and recording process until October 2007, when Armstrong said in an interview with Rolling Stone that the band had written "something like 45 songs" since January 2006. The band had been working on the beginning stages of the album at their rehearsal studio in Oakland, California. Little was revealed on the themes or musical style of the album. Armstrong said about possible themes: "I want to dig into who I am and what I'm feeling at this moment – which is middle-aged." He said many of the 45 songs the band had composed were written on piano, rather than guitar. Ultimately, Armstrong wrote "virtually every note and word" of 21st Century Breakdown himself.

In December, Soul Shine Magazine reported that Green Day would begin the recording process for the 45 written songs in January 2008. Later, in October 2008, a video was posted on YouTube of the band recording the album. Rolling Stone then confirmed that Green Day was working with producer Butch Vig on the upcoming album. The album was being recorded with Vig throughout 2008 and into early 2009, at four different locations: Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, California, Studio 880 in Oakland, California, Jel Studios in Newport Beach, California, and Costa Mesa Studios in Costa Mesa, California. While recording in Hollywood, the band members bought cheap turntables from Amoeba Music and listened to many vinyl records for inspiration, including albums by The Beat and The Plimsouls.[25] Armstrong has cited as inspiration The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow, The Doors' The Doors and Strange Days, Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell, and the music of The Kinks' Ray Davies.[25] Drummer Tré Cool has also noted the influence of Eddie Cochran and The Creation on Armstrong's writing. While working on material for 21st Century Breakdown at his home studio, Armstrong recorded a cover of The Who's 1966 mini-opera "A Quick One While He's Away". Green Day recorded a full-band version of the song during the album sessions, releasing it through iTunes as a bonus track.

Vig noted that frustrations would sometimes cause delays in the recording process: "They'd be working on a song, it wasn't coming together, and Billie would get frustrated. He'd put his guitar down and say, 'I'm going home.'" Armstrong also kept his lyrics closely guarded, intentionally mixing his demos so that the vocals were low and behind the guitars and thus unintelligible to the other band members. It was not until late in 2008 that he chose to share his words with Cool, Vig, and bassist Mike Dirnt, sitting down with them and reading the entire album's lyrics aloud in order. The band finally made the finishing touches on the album in early April 2009, claiming it was hard to release the album and that it was "kind of like having post-partum depression".

Promotion and release

On February 9, 2009, Green Day announced that the upcoming album would be titled 21st Century Breakdown and that it would be split into three acts; "Heroes and Cons", "Charlatans and Saints", and "Horseshoes and Handgrenades". On March 17 a teaser trailer for 21st Century Breakdown was posted to the band's website. A week later, it was announced that 21st Century Breakdown would have an international release date of May 15. In early April, Green Day premiered "Know Your Enemy" on television. A portion of the song was used as introductory music to the 2009 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament Championship game.

21st Century Breakdown was released internationally on May 15, 2009 through Reprise Records. A vinyl version was released, limited to 3,000 copies and consisting of three ten-inch records (one for each of the album's "acts"), a CD copy of the album, a sixty-page art booklet, and a digital download of the full album at midnight on the day of release. 21st Century Breakdown was only released in a Parental Advisory version containing explicit lyrics and content. Wal-Mart refuses to sell albums with a Parental Advisory sticker, and it requested that Green Day release a censored edition. Green Day chose not to release a censored edition and responded to Wal-Mart's request by stating, "There's nothing dirty about our record... They want artists to censor their records in order to be carried in there. We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something."

The first single, "Know Your Enemy", was released on April 16, and the world premier of the song's music video occurred on April 24 on the MTV UK website. It was subsequently posted to the band's MySpace profile.[38] The second single, "21 Guns", was released to radio stations on May 25. It will also feature in the soundtrack of the upcoming film Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.

Green Day first performed 21st Century Breakdown in full during a string of California club shows in April 2009. At each show, concertgoers were given programs containing all of the album's lyrics. During May, Green Day completed a 10-date arena tour of the UK in support of their new album. The band will embark on a world tour beginning in July and starting with a North American leg, which encompasses the months of July and August. They will be supported by Franz Ferdinand, The Bravery, and Kaiser Chiefs during the North American tour. After the North American session, the band plans to do a European leg that will last into November.

21st Century Breakdown continues the rock opera style of its predecessor American Idiot.The album is divided into three acts: "Heroes and Cons", "Charlatans and Saints", and "Horseshoes and Handgrenades". Its loose narrative follows a young couple named Christian and Gloria through life in the United States following the presidency of George W. Bush, as they "deal with the mess our 43rd president left behind" and "spin their wheels and fight their way through a new century already going terribly wrong." Bassist Mike Dirnt told Alternative Press that the songs "speak to each other the way the songs on Born to Run speak to each other. I don't know if you'd call it a 'concept album,' but there's a thread that connects everything."

David Fricke of Rolling Stone called the album "the most personal, emotionally convulsive record Armstrong has ever written", noting that many of its themes and lyrics are drawn from Armstrong's personal life: "When he sings about abandonment and vengeance in songs like 'Before the Lobotomy', 'Christian's Inferno', and 'Peacemaker', he does it in the first person." The title track's opening lyric "Born into Nixon, I was raised in hell" references Armstrong's own birthday in 1972, while "We are the class of '13" references the fact that his eldest son, Joseph, will graduate from high school in 2013. Dirnt has expressed his belief that "Last of the American Girls" was written about Armstrong's wife Adrienne, who "has very strong beliefs and stands up for the things she believes in." Armstrong has cited his "disconnected" childhood—he was raised by his two older brothers and three older sisters after their father's death, while their mother worked graveyard shifts as a waitress—as the roots of the discontent expressed on 21st Century Breakdown. "East Jesus Nowhere" rebukes fundamentalist religion and was written after Armstrong attended a church service where a friend's baby was baptized.

Musically, 21st Century Breakdown is similar to the punk rock style of American Idiot, but many critics have claimed that Green Day's traditional punk rock sound has evolved in the five years since their last release to incorporate new influences such as "well-built, muscular pop rock" and "king-sized stadium rock". Chris Fallon of AbsolutePunk.net said that 21st Century Breakdown, "weaving a yarn that while still punk rock in all its context, allowed the band to develop a gratuitous sense of self while expanding their trademarked brand of punk rock." Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone said the album sports the "sharpest, toughest tunes" and ballads that are "their glossiest ever". He claims Green Day "combine punk thrash with their newfound love of classic-rock grandiosity". MTV compared the material to classic rockers like The Who,[49] while Spin called the title track "Green Day's most epic song yet." Rolling Stone called the album "even more ambitious than American Idiot" and "a record of die-hard punk ideals...tightly scripted, continually ascending classic-rock excitement." Green Day drummer Tré Cool remarked that "It's important to us that we're still looked at as a punk band. It was our religion, our higher education", but noted that Armstrong had "gone archival" in writing 21st Century Breakdown, gleaning inspiration from "the architects of rock & roll". Armstrong himself stated that "Ground zero for me is still punk rock. I like painting an ugly picture. I get something uplifting out of singing some of the most horrifying shit you can sing about. It's just my DNA." Reception and sales

Reception of the album was generally favorable. DailyMusicGuide called the album "enthused, fresh, punchy and melodic", claiming the band has "pulled Green Day up from being just a punk band to a true anthemic stadium band." The Observer praised the album, awarding it four of five stars and likening it to both Bruce Springsteen's music and the avant-garde writing of Chuck Palahniuk, celebrating its "engrossing narrative." Entertainment Weekly stated, "AMERICAN GENIUSES: Rockers Green Day give their breakdown of the new millennium." The Tune gave the album an A grade, stating that "Green Day, in their ode to the Age of Technology - the Age of Disconnection - have created one of the best albums of the decade, one that reflects the culture and the times with occasional biting wit and frequent fist-pounding fury." Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone' gave the album 4½ stars out of 5, stating that, in comparison to the band's previous effort, "21st Century Breakdown is even better, so masterful and confident it makes Idiot seem like a warm-up." Fellow Rolling Stone senior editor David Fricke called it "a compound bomb of classic-rock ecstasy, no-mercy punk assault and pop-song wiles; it's like The Clash's London Calling, The Who's Quadrophenia and Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade all compressed into 18 songs." The Times called the album a masterpiece "because it realizes its ambitions" and stated that it carries the spirit of The Who, David Bowie, Queen, the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and The Clash. They conclude the article by saying that, "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."

Upon its release, 21st Century Breakdown reached number one on the Billboard 200 in the United States, selling 215,000 copies, despite only being available for three days in a shorter than usual debut week. The album also remained at number one on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart for three weeks. It debuted at the top of sales charts in at least thirteen other countries, as well as peaking at number one on the European Top 100 Albums chart. A position that was maintained for three consecutive weeks.

21st Century Breakdown - Tracklist

All lyrics written by Billie Joe Armstrong, all music composed by Green Day.

1. Song of the Century Act I: Heroes and Cons
2. 21st Century Breakdown
3. Know Your Enemy
4. ¡Viva la Gloria!
5. Before the Lobotomy
6. Christian's Inferno
7. Last Night on Earth Act II: Charlatans and Saints
8. East Jesus Nowhere
9. Peacemaker
10. Last of the American Girls
11. Murder City
12. ¿Viva la Gloria? (Little Girl)
13. Restless Heart Syndrome Act III: Horseshoes and Handgrenades
14. Horseshoes and Handgrenades
15. The Static Age
16. 21 Guns
17. American Eulogy" (A. "Mass Hysteria" / B. "Modern World")
18. See the Light

21st Century Breakdown Tour Dates

Dates and cities for Green Day's 21st Century Breakdown tour, according to Reprise Records:

7/3 -- Seattle
7/4 -- Vancouver, BC
7/6 -- Edmonton, AB
7/7 -- Saskatoon, SK
7/9 -- Winnipeg, MB
7/10 -- Fargo, ND
7/11 -- Minneapolis
7/13 -- Chicago
7/14 -- Detroit
7/16 -- Hamilton, ON
7/17 -- Ottawa
7/18 -- Montreal
7/20 -- Boston
7/21 -- Philadelphia
7/22 -- Pittsburgh
7/24 -- Hartford, CT
7/25 -- Albany, NY
7/27 -- New York
7/29 -- Washington
7/31 -- Nashville, TN
8/1 -- Atlanta
8/3 -- Tampa, FL
8/4 -- Miami
8/5 -- Orlando, FL
8/7 -- New Orleans
8/8 -- Houston
8/9 -- San Antonio
8/11 -- St. Louis
8/12 -- Kansas City, MO
8/12 -- Omaha, NE
8/15 -- Denver
8/16 -- Salt Lake City
8/18 -- San Jose, CA
8/20 -- San Diego
8/21 -- Las Vegas
8/22 -- Phoenix
8/24 -- Sacramento, CA
8/25 -- Los Angeles