This week Russian authorities rescued a feral girl who had been shut in an apartment and raised by dogs and cats for the first 5 years of her life. She is currently “refusing to eat with a spoon and has taken on many of the gestures of the animals with which she lived…(she) jumps at the door and barks.” Aside from being unwashed and clad in rags she looks like a normal little girl, though her behavior is completely disconnected from reality as a result of her total social isolation. Green Day should have called their new album The Feral Girl. Join me, Green Day and a literally wild child on a journey to the early 90s, and I’ll explain.
Green Day’s 1994 album Dookie was pitch perfect pop punk, speaking directly to the masses of pissed off teenagers and offering us a welcome respite from the doom and gloom grunge landscape. It was high-energy, angry and authentic, and has sold 15 million copies to date. Green Day were tapped for greatness, and promptly got locked in the apartment of mega-fame, their relevance to the people that made them successful straining under their insular, oxymoronic standing as "The Most Popular Punk Band in the World.”
As their fame and wealth continued to skyrocket, Green Day became disconnected from the outside world with only their fellow mega-bands [U2/dogs, Coldplay/cats] to offer them cues on how to behave. Fame dampened the youthful angst that they were founded on, and in need of a target for their cultural scorn, they filled the void with the same renewable resource all mega-bands eventually turn to: politics. It’s a formula that has worked for many (Dixie Chicks, The Beatles, U2), but with Green Day it feels an affectation, an attempt to make records deemed “important”. Lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong described the record thusly: “21st Century Breakdown is 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.” Then he farted gold dust and blew his nose on a diamond.
Point is: Green Day is out of touch, their inane political musings as relevant as the barks of a 5 year old girl. But just because the album parallels a feral Russian child, doesn’t mean it sucks. Musically it’s excellent, and very much equals the Green Day of old. The intensity hasn’t faltered, the songwriting’s great and Billie Joe still sings like he’s British. Songs like “Christian’s Inferno” and (cringe) “Horseshoes and Handgrenades” are Green Day at their best, but are bogged down by their painfully preachy titles and lyrics like:
“I am the atom bomb/
I am the chosen one/
Toxin your reservoir/
And then return man to ape”
The political slant feels like muddled pretension, and while their energy suggests that their hearts are in it, their words tell a different story. 21st Century Breakdown would probably best be enjoyed by someone with no language at all, who could appreciate the rhythm and musicality of their effort and skip the overwrought sentiment entirely. But where are we going to find someone like that?