A recent topic on Buffy Talk dragged up an issue about bands moving in new directions. The two classic examples happen to be the two that came up in the topic. Green Day’s American Idiot and Blink 182’s self-titled.
Most people seem to judge these albums as the same stuff the band have been producing all along and so give it a negative rating. Thus when a band releases an album like this it can do a lot of damage to their fanbase so it’s a pretty brave move to make.
I love those two albums though. As much as I love punk revival and bands singing about getting stoned and acting like your in college for the rest of your life, I think eventually if you were singing that all the time you would want to move on to something a bit more challenging.
You really have to give the albums a chance. I didn’t like Blink 182’s self-titled at first, I really had to give it a good few listens as it’s easy to dismiss it as different from their earlier work and ignore it. But I’m glad I did. Also American Idiot – it’s a rock opera and a very successful one. Indeed it’s probably the most successful rock opera since Pink Floyd’s The Wall.
That’s amazing! It’s going to put Green Day firmly in history as the band that not only spearheaded punk revival but created the “closest thing to an anti-war album America has” when it wasn’t even about the second Gulf war, if you want an anti-war album go to Bad Religion’s The Empire Strikes First.
My point is, you shouldn’t dismiss an album just because it’s different from their previous albums. If it’s a bad album then fair enough, but American Idiot received the highest rating from All Music Guide (the database that powers MP3.com, Yahoo Music, etc) of any Green Day album and Blink 182’s self-titled was up there with the rest of their albums. Different direction, but they still rock.
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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 28th, 2006 at 12:05 am and is filed under Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.