I have been listening to Green Day’s latest album American Idiot for the last few days and I am becoming convinced that it will rank up there with some of the best albums of all time. There is something classic and powerful about the whole thing…not one song fails.

 

It’s funny about genres, they come and go and come again and just when you think the genre has breathed its last something amazing comes out of nowhere and caps it. I think in the film genre the western seemed nearly dead by the 1990’s with its heyday in the 50’s long gone – until Clint Eastwood comes in and gives us Unforgiven, maybe the best western ever made that somehow connected the age it came out in with the western’s golden age.

 

There’s no doubt that Green Day is a punk band and that this album may rank as one of the best punk albums ever made (it certainly ranks with The Sex Pistols album Never Mind The Bollocks… ) but like Unforgiven and other genre toppers it speaks directly to our age and links it seamlessly with the golden age of punk in the late 70’s.