21st Century Breakdown - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

Media reception to 21st Century Breakdown was generally favorable; aggregating website Metacritic reported a rating of 70 percent in July 2009 based on 30 critical reviews. Dan Silver of The Observer awarded the record four stars out of five and likened it to both Bruce Springsteen's music and the avant-garde writing of Chuck Palahniuk. Rolling Stone's David Fricke called 21st Century Breakdown "a compound bomb of classic-rock ecstasy, no-mercy punk assault and pop-song wiles; it's like The Clash's London Calling, The Who's Quadrophenia and Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade all compressed into 18 songs". Dan Cairns of The Times concluded, "Lyrically, it may succeed in capturing the contradictions, vulnerabilities and longing for harmony that thrum through Armstrong, Dirnt and Cool, their country, and humanity as a whole. But its real triumph, in an age of trimming, of market testing, of self-censorship and lowest common denominators, is not simply to aim insanely high, but to make it to the summit."

Criticism centered on the concept of the record; BBC's Chris Jones said that it is "griping vaguely against 'authority' " and that "too many buzz words obscure incisive meaning". Steve Kandell of Spin wrote that the humor of American Idiot was "sorely missed" and that the energy of the album seemed "directionless". The Guardian's Alexis Petridis indicated that "the storyline becomes impossible to follow". Adam Downer of Sputnikmusic was the most critical professional reviewer of the album and questioned the clarity of the lyrics by calling 21st Century Breakdown "more conceptually vague/ridiculous than American Idiot"; he went on to say that it "spirals out of control in its own heroic glory and never regains focus, thus ending with a product that Green Day couldn’t afford to produce: an average record".