I have to admit that despite not being a great fan of Green Day I really rate
American Idiot. Some will disagree but moving Green Day into a more mainstream rock sound was a smart move commercially. But more importantly
American Idiot showed some artistic intent which manifested itself by making AI a concept album. It wasn't exceptionally original (they were effectively making a poorer version of The Who's concept albums without Townshend's writing ability) but it showed that these guys had some ambition. And in the end they made a pretty damn good hard rock album with some pop stylings to keep it selling. In my purely subjective opinion I feel that this was better than any pop-punk album they made throughout the nineties (With apologies to
Dookie)
That's my brief two cents on the matter.
