Popular culture in 2016 seems to have gone: “Hey, what was popular 20 years ago? Pokémon, Ghostbusters, Hey Arnold, MTV, Britney Spears… Why don’t we just make them all again?!”
And that’s what has happened! We’re getting reboots everywhere and 90s fashion is back.
What seems to have happened now is that Green Day have seen this trend, gone “We were cool back then too!” and released a new album without any thought what so ever.
The new album Revolution Radio is Green Day’s attempt to get back into the charts and riding this wave of nostalgia. Sadly, this group of angst-fuelled rebels have grown up a fair bit since then and aren’t quite the breakout band they once were.
The group once stood proud thrusting a middle finger to the government and industry snobs, shouting about freedom, revolution and things their audience could actually relate to. This album has none of that. The angst has gone and each song bleeds into the next.
My biggest issue is that the whole album feels like a half an hour song with pauses for breaths every three to four minutes. None of the songs stand out. I could not pick one song that stood out to me in that album.
The worst thing was that I was so wanting there to be a new track that I could crank up and head bang along to, yet – dare I say – I found myself almost bored and praying that the next song would be something different.
Revolution Radio’s formula seems to be: start soft for about 30 seconds, then play guitar and drums really loud with Billy Joe Armstrong singing generic lyrics over the top. This was every song’s formula, apart from the last track.
Ordinary World is my favourite track of the album but just when I was enjoying it, the song finished. The one different track in the whole 12 song album is really short and when you listen to the lyrics it’s actually just as generic as the rest.
The album wants to be what Green Day once was. As a fan I wish it was, but I was so disappointed by the album as a whole that it made me angry. The fact that all the tracks are the same was a shock to me – we know the band can do variety as they’ve shown us in other albums.
The band are doing a three show UK tour next February – which no doubt will sell out – but I can tell you now that every single person at those gigs will be fans wanting to hear old songs, not this new album.
Bring back the Green Day we love, or stop before you taint a whole generation’s idealistic view of you, Green Day.