"There's no business like show business." --Annie Get Your Gun

American Idiot is Green Day’s attempt at something between a Bush-Presidency musical diatribe and a pop-punk rock opera. Let’s just say that Green Day is not The Who and American Idiot is no Tommy (though a stage adaptation of the album is slated to open at the Berkeley Repertory Theater in September 2009). Nor are the explicitly anti-Bush lyrics terribly impressive nor influential--need I remind anyone who won the 2004 election, even after the release of this album?

The music is pretty typical Green Day--bright, fast, and loud power chords, with little deviation from a straight-eighth bass line and even louder drums behind it. Billie Joe Armstrong’s voice is just as nasally as ever (so maybe he’ll fit in well in the musical theatre scene).

American Idiot isn’t terrible, but it certainly doesn’t achieve the “grand aspirations” the band admits to having for the album. Its biggest problem is that it didn’t choose between rock opera or stinging reflection of popular American unrest. Songs like “Holiday” and “American Idiot”--two of the album’s singles--just don’t fit with the story that plays out through the rest of the work. The story attempting to be told doesn’t quite pan out as a story, which is a shame because I feel Green Day could have transmitted their overarching societal message through craftier work within the tale the album begins to sketch. Unfortunately, American Idiot falls short.

For more information about the stage production of American Idiot and citation of my quote see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/theater/30berk.html?_r=2&8dpc