It’s become almost impossible for me to objectively talk about Green Day’s American Idiot, musically. I can talk about Green Day’s career, where the seminal record’s themes and tone fit in with the rest of their discography, and why Billie Joe Armstrong’s use of his classic “Billie-isms” faded for a bit in the mid-2000s leading up to this album before coming back strong after their 2009 album 21st Century Breakdown. I can talk about their other projects musically; how Kerplunk, despite suffering from (or featuring, depending on your tastes) the same low-fi production values of their debut album 39/smooth, is actually more similar to their major label debut Dookie than any other two Green Day albums are to each other.

But American Idiot is a tough one for me to put into words. After all, this is the album that got me into my favorite band of all time; this is the album that, just a year after its release, iTunes told me I’d listened to a few hundred times; this is the album that completely shaped my musical tastes over the next decade — no wonder I can’t put into words how these songs actually sound. This goes a bit further than rose-tinted glasses affecting how I feel about a childhood album; there are plenty of albums from my past that I love and can talk about somewhat objectively without struggling to find words. But with American Idiot each track has become such an integral part of my life and myself that I can’t fairly critique anything about any of it.

Despite knowing the entire album front-to-back and note-for-note, if you asked me to give some meaningful thoughts on ‘Extraordinary Girl’, all I could say about it is that it’s the song after ‘She’s a Rebel’ and before ‘Letterbomb’. If you asked me whether or not I liked the mid-album scorcher ‘St. Jimmy’, all I could say without being disingenuous is, “That is a song on the album American Idiot and I like the album American Idiot.”

So why do I want to find out if American Idiot is objectively, musically, a good album? After all, regardless of the conclusion I come to here, I don’t think my personal opinions or feelings of the record will meaningfully change — it’ll still be the most important piece of music I’ve ever discovered, and I’ll still listen to it semi-regularly until the day I die.

Mostly I’m just curious, and it’s a strong enough curiosity that I feel like the coming conclusion is sort of important to my understanding of the record. In other words, I can’t fully appreciate or consider American Idiot because I have no idea what a regular person (read: a person who isn’t helplessly obsessed with Green Day’s music) even hears when they put on the record.

So the only way I could possibly give some sort of objective (or hell, even subjective) analysis of what I actually hear when I listen to this album is if I approach it with fresh, unaffected ears — with the ears of someone who doesn’t know every Green Day album cut, b-side, and bonus track.

So here are my (as near as possible) unbiased thoughts on American Idiot, an album I haven’t heard before by a band I sort of know, who I think made that overused graduation song and that one punk album back in the 90s that some of my friends were into.

My very, very soft thesis is that American Idiot is a set of fun, well-written rock songs that, taken alone, are completely unspecial.

My Thoughts on Green Day’s American Idiot

The lead single, title track, and perhaps the band’s most recognizable anthem kicks things off with a loud and bold statement: Don’t wanna be an American Idiot.

(Just a minor side rant: I prefer albums that don’t have title tracks. And beginning your album with the title track? I’m going to be upset before I even hit play. My favorite is when a band takes an otherwise forgettable phrase from the bridge of a track on the back half and names the album after it.)

The verses are a repeated call-and-reply between Billie Joe and his crunchy electric guitar. It’s very punk sounding, but with the catchiness of the radio pop-rock of the era. I hesitate to call this pop-punk like some of their older material that I’ve heard. It’s like instead of thoroughly blending the two genres together, they sat the two genres next to each other, keeping them a few inches apart; it’s not pop-punk, it’s pop AND punk. A minor difference, but a clear one, and one worth mentioning.

A guitar solo, if you’d like to call it that, bridges the final two choruses, and before I even realize what’s happened, the track ends and I’m being thrown into the ten-minute, multi-part epic ‘Jesus of Suburbia’. I did not expect to get something this seemingly ambitious on what I assumed to be a straightforward punk record. And while the ambition doesn’t go much further than surface level characteristics like long track length, changing tempos, and smooth transitions, it’s still incredibly well-done and indeed ambitious for what it is.

And those transitions are smooth. True, each of the five vignettes here shares the same general sound, but they’re all different enough in pace, tone, and volume that it’s impressive when the band pulls off these agile, seamless switches that make you forget a change even happened. The best thing you could say about a song this long can fairly be said about ‘Jesus of Suburbia’: it feels like one long, coherent idea rather than multiple unrelated bits carelessly patch-worked together.

If an anti-war song could be bouncy, fun, and somewhat lyrically lighthearted, the next track, ‘Holiday’, would be it. Highlighted by a soaring chorus and heavy power chords, this is the most well-polished, focused song on the record so far. The bridge breaks down into a tongue-in-cheek rally cry that sees Billie Joe playing the part of a war-hungry authoritarian advocating for violence and war-crimes before turning around and denouncing those very same views. Billie Joe shouts and yells into a final chorus that fades nicely into ‘Boulevard of Broken Dreams’, a mid-tempo brooder describing a sense of vague loneliness.

These songs, despite feigning a rough interior, are all unapologetically polished to a bright sheen — tight, reverberated lead guitar, crisp, clear percussion, and beautifully layered vocals again have me asking the question: is this supposed to be a punk record?

Sonically it might not be; this isn’t a Sex Pistols record and there’s nothing on here that indicates this might be the same band who wrote ‘Basket Case’ or ‘Geek Stink Breath’. But some of American Idiot sounds like it wouldn’t be completely out of place standing next to Bad Religion’s ‘Punk Rock Song’. Plus, there’s the idea that this album is rock’s defining political statement of Bush-era America. That certainly gives the album punk credits, even if the political connections and themes are sort of unspecific and take a backseat to the album’s overarching story of St. Jimmy (this stuff mostly goes over my head; it’s not incredibly clear and it seems disjointed and poorly executed — but there’s an entire musical based on the album and its story so who am I?).

The middle section of the tracklist does little to help gauge the punk-ness of this release: ‘Are We the Waiting’, a pretty ballad with more highly polished vocals (Billie Joe’s singing really shines on this one) jarringly gets pushed aside by the raucous ‘St. Jimmy’, which outspeeds anything else on the album.

Then there’s the curious double-pairing of the next four tracks: the mid-tempo, sweet sounding ‘Give Me Novacaine’ paired with bouncy power-pop tune ‘She’s a Rebel’; then the strangely Egyptian-sounding ‘Extraordinary Girl’ with alt-rock jam ‘Letterbomb’. These two pairs, despite the former fading into the latter in each case, feel unnecessarily mashed together. Maybe there’s a story connection I’m not seeing (because at this point in the process I’ve completely tuned out the narrative and much of the lyrics), but otherwise each of the pairs don’t sound like they belong together in any way. They’re all perfectly fine and enjoyable though, even if they break up the small amount of flow that the first half of the album established.

The disc’s final stretch is approaching, and I feel like I have a pretty clear answer to the question of punk-ness posed earlier: No. But it’s pretty obvious that that’s not what the band was going for.

Moving on, ‘Wake Me up When September Ends’ is an inoffensive but ultimately forgettable ballad, and it appears the record is really losing steam at this point. Thankfully, the final two tracks might be the strongest this release has to offer.

‘Homecoming’ is another ten-minute epic in the style of ‘Jesus of Suburbia’. This time, the band is a little more adventurous with changing styles in-song; there’s a (maybe unintentionally) haunting chanted section where bassist Mike Dirnt shouts, Nobody likes you, everyone left you / They’re all out without you having fun. Drummer Tre Cool follows with his own short rock-n-roll themed vignette. Billie Joe’s voice finally returns minutes later, just in time for the listener to realize how much it was missed. The song’s climax is full of ringing bells, boastful marching drums, and loud guitars pick-sliding into huge, arena-filling chords.

Surprisingly, it’s sort of draining, so it’s appreciated that the final track is a mostly relaxing slow-burner. ‘Whatsername’ contrasts quiet palm-muted power chords in the verses with a loud but not too heavy distorted guitar in the final chorus. The record’s closing moments are nostalgic in a way that’s hard to describe. The quiet reverb of the lead guitar expresses a feeling of longing and loss as Billie Joe tries to recall faded memories. It’s the perfect closer to an album that made me feel like I got lost too many times on the way to the end.

***

So there you go. My honest, unbiased thoughts on my favorite album of all time. Despite my skeptical thesis not being too far from the truth and the amount of negativity above, I love every moment of American Idiot and I don’t think I’d change many things about it.