American Idiot is the best Green Day album
Says Ian Winwood
Kerrang! Writer
February 1 marks the 26th birthday of Dookie, the album that first brought Green Day to international attention and which, for the first time, smashed the glass ceiling that separated American punk rock from the mainstream.
In the autumn, American Idiot, the Oakland trio’s seventh LP, will celebrate its 16th year of release. For the genre that Green Day represent -- and have represented since they first appeared onstage at the Holy Site of 924 Gilman Street under the name Sweet Children in 1987 -- it is the first of these occasions that is the most significant. But in terms of the group’s own music, it is the second that towers.
To understand why American Idiot is Green Day’s finest work, one must also consider Dookie. Only an arch contrarian, or an idiot, would deny that the band’s blockbusting third album is anything less than a peach. It has effervescence, it has fizz, and it is teeming with caffeinated pop songs that enter the ear without an exit plan. But it is adolescent music made by three young men themselves not long out of adolescence. American Idiot, on the other hand, is an adult album, and one of such quality that, at least in parts, it’s difficult to believe that it was made by the same band.