10 Terrible Rock Albums (That Aren't As Bad As You Think)

With the '00s underway, Green Day had done the near-impossible with American Idiot. Starting from scratch after their masters were stolen, Billie Joe Armstrong constructed a punk rock opera, which ended up giving their entire career a second wind with songs like the title track and "Holiday."

Any musician dreams of that kind of success, but if you have an album that good in your catalog, anything you release directly after is going to be considered poor by comparison.

Such was the case for 21st Century Breakdown, which showed the band basically repeating the same rock opera structure as their previous effort. That kind of followup seems incredibly uninspired, but the band's attempt at making lightning strike twice is actually a strong contender for one of their best records. As opposed to the straight ahead punk grooves of their earlier records, this is the Green Day for songwriters, with each track reflecting a more classic rock maturity like on "Last Night on Earth" and "21 Guns."

Even the more maniacal cuts like "East Jesus Nowhere" and "Restless Heart Syndrome" delve into even darker territory, with the band touching on organized religion and personality complexes in a natural way. This may stand as the punk rock version of The Who's Quadrophenia, but as far as the individual songs go, this is one of the band's most solid releases since the '90s.