Review:

on 2010-08-05 george3724 Said:

Following the immense success of their comeback album American Idiot, Green Day soon wrote another one, modeling it after their greatest success. However, this time, 21st Century Breakdown's story revolved around a working class couple, Christian and Gloria and their lives, struggles, and triumphs.

To me, 21st Century Breakdown was both a success and a disappointment. The mainstream success for 21st Century Breakdown was enormous and rivaled that of American Idiot. However, with mainstream success, it seems that Green Day has lost some of their classic punk style and started experimenting in loud pop rock. So it was a bit too mainstream for me.

I did like most of the songs and the story behind 21st Century Breakdown but after some listening, I discovered that Green Day had reused some of their old material in a couple of the songs in 21st Century Breakdown. For instance, the intro riff to Know Your Enemy is the same to the intro riff to American Idiot, just in a higher key. I noticed some other similarities but those are for you to sniff out (I could be mistaken).

Overall, 21st Century Breakdown was a good album of Green Day. It would be hard to live up to listener's expectations after American Idiot. After all, it did win a Grammy for best rock album. So as a word of advice, if you liked American Idiot and listen to the radio a lot, you might want to get the album.
Rating: 7/10