Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown (2009/2012) [HDTracks FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Chart History/Awards
– Reached #1 on the Billboard 200.
– Reached #1 on Billboard‘s Top Modern Rock/Alternative Albums.
– Reached #1 on Billboard‘s Top Rock Albums.
– Includes the chart-topping hit “Know Your Enemy.”
– GRAMMY® Winner for Best Rock Album.

21st Century Breakdown is the band’s highly anticipated sophomore rock opera. Following the success of American Idiot, the album would top various Billboard charts and won the GRAMMY® Award for Best Rock Album. The platinum masterpiece includes the hit singles “Know Your Enemy” and “21 Guns,” two tracks that exemplified the band’s exhilarating vocal harmonies and stellar guitar-work. It is included on Rolling Stone’s “Best Albums of 2009.”

American Idiot was a rarity of the 21st century: a bona fide four-quadrant hit, earning critical and commercial respect, roping in new fans young and old alike. It was so big it turned Green Day into something it had never been before – respected, serious rockers, something they were never considered during their first flight of success with Dookie. Back then, they were clearly (and proudly) slacker rebels with a natural gift for a pop hook, but American Idiot was a big album with big ideas, a political rock opera in an era devoid of both protest rock and wild ambition, so its success was a surprise. It also ratcheted up high expectations for its successor, and Green Day consciously plays toward those expectations on 2009’s 21st Century Breakdown, another political rock opera that isn’t an explicit sequel but could easily be mistaken for one, especially as its narrative follows a young couple through the wilderness of modern urban America. Heady stuff, but like the best rock operas, the concept doesn’t get in the way of the music, which is a bit of an accomplishment because 21st Century Breakdown leaves behind the punchy ’60s Who fascination for Queen and ’70s Who, giving this more than its share of pomp and circumstance. Then again, puffed-up protest is kind of the point of 21st Century Breakdown: it’s meant to be taken seriously, so it’s not entirely surprising that Green Day fall into many of the same pompous tarpits as their heroes, ratcheting up the stately pianos, vocal harmonies, repeated musical motifs, doubled and tripled guitars, and synthesized effects that substitute for strings, then adding some orchestras for good measure. It would all sound cluttered, even turgid, if it weren’t for Green Day’s unerring knack for writing muscular pop and natural inclination to run clean and lean, letting only one song run over five minutes and never letting the arrangements overshadow the song. Although Green Day’s other natural gift, that for impish irreverent humor, is missed – they left it all behind on their 2008 garage rock side project Foxboro Hot Tubs – the band manages to have 21st Century Breakdown work on a grand scale without losing either their punk or pop roots, which makes the album not only a sequel to American Idiot, but its equal.

Tracklist:
01 – Song Of The Century
02 – 21st Century Breakdown
03 – Know Your Enemy
04 – Viva La Gloria!
05 – Before The Lobotomy
06 – Christian’s Inferno
07 – Last Night On Earth
08 – East Jesus Nowhere
09 – Peacemaker
10 – Last Of The American Girls
11 – Murder City
12 – Viva La Gloria? (Little Girl)
13 – Restless Heart Syndrome
14 – Horseshoes And Handgrenades
15 – The Static Age
16 – 21 Guns
17 – American Eulogy: Mass Hysteria/Modern World
18 – See The Light