10 Perfect Follow Ups To Masterpiece Albums

Once a rock band has a classic under their belt, there’s no one else who can touch them. Even if they cough it up or head into the downslide of their career directly after these albums, you can never fault them for at least knocking it out of the park once. You can’t end up beating perfection the second time around, but every one of these bands managed to give us even more than what we asked for for part 2.

Even though they already gave us a masterpiece by themselves, the follow ups to every one of these classic albums were at least on par with what they were doing the last time, either expanding upon what they already did or going in the exact opposite direction. Granted, it’s never an easy thing to make the same classic record over again, and the challenge of making a good album is almost twice as hard when you have something to live up to like this.

Although every one of these albums may have had the odds stacked against them, the beauty comes from just what they're able to do with their usual formula, making something that’s either a direct response to their newfound status or just laying claim to their throne as rock and roll gods. It’s not the most envious position for someone to be in, but when you break it down, the art of following up a classic is actually pretty simple: just write another classic.

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.