Green Day recently released its 14th (14th!!!) studio album. It’s called Saviors, and it’s good. Like, really good, much better than one would expect from a band that, 20-plus years ago, had been written off as a viable commercial force.
So, yeah, Saviors is a first-rate entry into one of the greater mainstream rock canons of the past 30 years. It’s political without being overbearing. “Look Ma, No Brains!” is a nice throwback to the band’s early catalog. “Bobby Sox” has real heart. “Goodnight Adeline” is among the more intimate tracks the trio has ever recorded. And “Fancy Sauce” just goes!
Reviews have been generally positive. Critics mostly like Saviors. Fans mostly like Saviors. It will play well on the band’s upcoming tour. And, yet, some online chatter has intimated that Saviors, while a quality release, pales in comparison to a predecessor, namely, American Idiot – aka the album that relaunched Green Day into the pop-rock stratosphere 20 years ago.
Green Day has been here before, more than once, in fact.
The band, despite being labeled by some an overnight success when the multiplatinum Dookie dropped in 1994, had actually generated quite the following in the band’s native Bay Area in the years preceding its major label debut. Green Day had in fact released two studio albums – 39/Smooth and Kerplunk – the latter of which really put the band on the map in the Bay Area underground.
Of course, as was custom in the ’90s, underground success via an independent label yielded major label interest. Green Day signed to Reprise, which remains its label to this day. The trio recorded Dookie, absolute pop-punk perfection. The album went Diamond. Green Day became a phenom, adored by millions.
Save for many in the aforementioned underground Bay Area punk scene.
Green Day were labeled sellouts. Cash grabbers. The band was banned from the famed Gilman club (fences were mended and the band later played a benefit concert at the venue in 2015). To some, Green Day was no longer Green Day.
Then came Insomniac.
Green Day’s follow-up to Dookie, Insomniac was released less than two years after its predecessor made the band one of the biggest in the world. Perhaps as a prove-it move to show that Dookie wasn’t a one-off fluke, the band changed course a bit on Insomniac. The album is darker, bleaker, probably better musically than Dookie but lacking its commercial appeal. Save for “Brain Stew” (a modest hit at the time), there wasn’t even a clear radio single to be had.
It not only suffered commercially – double-platinum, less than one-fifth the sales of Dookie – it really pissed some people off, particularly those who expected Dookie: Part II. What followed was a slightly more accessible follow-up (1997’s Nimrod) and the band’s first real go at political messaging (2000’s Warning). Both sold reasonably well, but for all intents and purposes, as the ’90s ended, so too did Green Day’s commercial prime.
Then came American Idiot, the most politically charged mainstream album of 2004, a pitch-perfect rock opera that explores life in a post-9/11 world. The album is flawless, and thanks to smash singles like the title track, “Holiday,” “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” changed the band’s course. No longer was Green Day a legacy act of yesteryear; the trio was arguably the biggest band in music.
Then came 21st Century Breakdown.
Anticipation was high for this one, given it came five years after American Idiot and was to be similar in tone to its political rock-opera predecessor. 21st Century Breakdown is actually a really good album and worthy successor, if not a little bloated. But it’s not American Idiot. It was well received, just not as well as American Idiot. It sold well, just not as well as American Idiot. Singles did well, but not American Idiot levels.
You get it.
Some 15 years later, it seems like Green Day is still chasing – or perhaps just expected to chase – American Idiot. The trio is almost a victim of its own creativity and success. Enter Saviors, which hits some of the same beats – social issues, introspection, growing older – all in a melodic and commercial-friendly wrapper.
Is Saviors as good as American Idiot? No, but it’s the trio’s best album since, a testament to a band that has bucked convention and defied the odds for much of the past 30 years, a band that has risen from the ashes on more than one occasion.
Just when many had written Green Day off, the band up and surprised us again. It sure as hell wasn’t the first time.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
