Green Day's latest album, Shenanigans, brought me back to my middle school years when the group first hit it big. I sat in Home-Ec class reciting the lyrics to "Longview" in an attempt to impress the guys at the next cook station. I made fun of people who claimed to like Green Day, but didn't own their first two albums. I wore the Dookie T-shirt to school at least once a week.
Then everything fell to pieces. "Longview"'s excessive airtime made it uncool to hum, even in the shower. I gave my shirt to a neighbor and hid all three of their tapes under my bed.
So I now find myself asking, is there some weird stigma attached to owning a Green Day CD in 2002? I was under the impression that these guys had disappeared into the "I got popular too fast and burnt out" category. However, to my surprise, Green Day did not stop producing albums just because they lost popularity in my immediate social circle. Shenanigans is their fourth album released since Dookie's appearance in 1994.
So were does that leave us, oh music lovers? Now, with CD in hand, I feel obliged to give my honest opinion of Green Day. Green Day's songs are filled with repetitive, catchy lyrics that are at times soothing -- in the sense that the chorus can easily be memorized and sung aloud. I have a hard time feeling any deep emotional connection to any of the songs on their new album, however I feel it makes for good background music at a summer BBQ, or at a fourteen-year-old's birthday party.
So here's how it breaks down. If you listened to Green Day in seventh grade to be cool, you probably won't like this album. If you like all the other stuff, go for it, it's pretty much the same. If you have never heard of Green Day and because of this review you are inspired to look them up, go to a used CD shop and buy whichever album is cheapest. They're all the same.
- Grace Cary
