10 Perfect Follow Ups To Masterpiece Albums

10. 21st Century Breakdown - Green Day

After you’ve been in a pop punk band for 10 years, it’s probably time to call it a day. The genre is always meant to be a young man’s game, but Green Day had the power to span across multiple generations, turning in American Idiot and launching themselves into the next decade as a more militant form of punk rock. And since the political concept album worked once, it only made sense to try and do it again.

That’s not to say that 21st Century Breakdown is just a retread of what happened back on the last record. Compared to American Idiot, this record has a lot more sonic avenues to explore, going into the world of classic rock by bringing in strings and slowing things down a fair bit on songs like Last Night On Earth, which inches closer to Beatles territory than punk rock. The punk rock attitude hasn’t gone anywhere though, with songs like East Jesus Nowhere and Viva La Gloria having a fair bit of crunch once they do eventually get going.

The story is told a lot more loosely this time around, but that just gives Billie Joe Armstrong more ways to reinvent what Green Day is supposed to be, like turning in ballads like 21 Guns and full on theatrical productions like at the end of Restless Heart Syndrome. 21st Century Breakdown might not be as concise a story as what Green Day did the first time, but this is like the grown up version of Jesus of Suburbia, still hungry and looking for answers to all the problems in life.