10 Albums That The Critics Got Wrong
2. Uno - Green Day
Whenever you listen to a new album, not many people are expecting anything to be bad. As much as you may see red flags appearing, you always want your favorite artists to do well even in the most dire circumstances. But when you can see the errors on display from the word go, you can't just overlook them like this.
In the original review for the start of Green Day's trilogy Uno, the Rolling Stone review read like they had just matched their past glory, with most of the songs being heralded as great before they even had the chance to hit radio. That's not to say that the record is all-out bad...but it pales in comparison to everything that Green Day was capable of before.
It gets all the more embarrassing when you see the original reviews of the band's classic output. When you look at the 4 star rating that Uno got, it's hard to take it seriously when Rolling Stone originally gave American Idiot a 3.5 star rating just a few years before. So that means by pure numbers alone, American Idiot is a far weaker record songwise than the start of one of the milquetoast periods in pop punk history. Out of all the weird reviews you see out in the wild, this is the prime candidate for someone who has no idea what they're talking about.