"I went to a whore, he said my life's a bore..."

 

I have yet to read a negative review of the new Green Day(concept) album, but I'll be the first to admit I liked them much more when Billy Joe sang about weed and wasting time. 

This is not a terrible song--it's almost virally catchy, but " Do you know your enemy?" is not a profound question. 21st Century Breakdown may be so "confident it makes Idiot seem like a warm-up", but "American Idiot" wasn't profound either. Yes, we are all American idiots, controlled by the media, but what should we do about it?The new album doesn't offer much more of a solution to that question than Dookie did.

 My friend Scott and I were complaining/conversing recently about the lack of real political music in the mainstream that is actually good (which cuts out a lot) and actually has depth (which cuts out Green Day). Do I have high expectations? My parents had John Lennon, so maybe I hold a high standard for music that atempts to speak for a generation with a little more complexity then "Fuck them!...I won't offer a solution, but, seriously, Fuck them!" (and yeah, Punk typically does point out the problem, not the solution, but for all the praise this album is getting, I feel comfortable making cross genre comparisons...) Or is Billy Joe really as "prophetic" , and "practically Milton" (actually, I don't even really understand that one to begin with) as he is being made out to be?