21st Century Breakdown

Am playing Green Day's new album, 21st Century Breakdown over and over in the car stereo and here at home. Somehow they managed to top American Idiot -- or maybe they just picked up and moved forward from where they last left off.

This new one is highly singable and full of fire. (You know you have a winner when after the first time through you hit replay and can sing along with all the choruses without even looking at the lyrics.) American Idiot is going to become a staged rock opera -- I read the casting notice for it in Backstage magazine over spring break. 21st Century Breakdown is also written as a rock opera, with Christian and Gloria as the leading characters.

The first single, as noted on the Kinks Preservation Society email digest, takes the opening chord sounds from Word of Mouth and then goes in another direction with them. Green Day resonates with some of my favorite bands of all times: the Kinks, Sex Pistols and the Clash. It's a natural progression from "20th Century Man" to "21st Century Breakdown":



And here's the title song from the Kinks' Word of Mouth (1984)