Green Day American Idiot. Release Date : September 21, 2004. Label: Reprise. Rating: Andy doesn't dig rating stuff. While this album is already 'old news' and everyone's probably heard it already, it's still reaping oodles of benefits and rewards... including a bunch of new Grammys. So it's still a relevant record to talk about. Some will say Green Day sold out with this record. Some will say they got back to their roots with it. What I see is a band that spent years gaining popularity and paying dues until they got to this point - a nearly-perfect album. Even without it being my absolute favourite type of music, I can get out of this that it's the climax of Green Day-itude for its clarity, it's powerful words combined with a rock-punk sound that's not too much of either. Which makes it even more punk, because it refuses to be clearly defined. ANd donning eye make-up way past the time it seemed appropriate for Billy Joe Armstrong to do so. They retropunked themselves in a new-millenium sort of way without being pop-punk about it. Awesome! After so many years, they can still make a statement, one more profound than ever amongst a sea of selfish lovelorn lyrics (which i adore, don't get me wrong... I'm just saying, Green Day stands out for addressing the planet instead of one girl or a tiny group of friends and foes). Hilariously, "Jesus of Suburbia" sounds like "Summer of '69" by uber-Canadian Bryan Adams. This album though is so solid, it's hard to dissect it into songs or moments or favourites. It's weirdly uplifting in its unification, its 'we're the youth, take that,' its anthems for the generation they're still a part of even though they're twice the age of much of that generation. It does get a little uppity-poppity inthe middle, like maybe they ran out of awesome for a bit. More likely it's just less my style - it's not poppy so much as it is quicker and therefore easier to equate with modern pop-punk - but lest we forget, Green Day was a pioneer of such a sound int he first place, so they have all the license in the world to use it. Song of choice : Dig the singles lots still... even after having heard "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" a trillion times, I still love it, so that's saying a lot. -Andy Scheffler Elsewhere Green Day website Published : February, 2006.