"Father of All Motherf******" by Green Day
When Green Day announced that they’d be releasing a new album, Father of All Motherfuckers, to go along with their upcoming Hella Mega Tour with Weezer and Fallout Boy, candidly speaking, I had mixed feelings. It was impossible to expect the same thing with a band like Green Day, which has been active for over thirty years. But, it’s also important to have an open mind, so that even if I didn’t like it, I could still realize its value.
I was very young when I first started listening to Green Day, so the opportunity to sit down and really understand their message and sound for this new chapter in their career was exciting. For a sizable portion of our generation, Green Day played at least some role in our childhoods, at least among the “quirky” kids. It was alternative enough to be interesting and get us excited, all while still being accessible. Looking back, this is exactly what I enjoyed about their early works. They were authentic, unafraid to be vulnerable, angry with the state of politics and our society, and had the guts to let everyone know.
Unfortunately, if I’m to be honest, I was, at best, mildly entertained by Rebel Radio. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t like it as much as their previous work, and back in 2016, I couldn’t pin down why. With Father of All Motherfuckers, I know exactly why I had issues with it, as their newest release further makes clear what I didn’t like about Rebel Radio: It is all the same. There’s, relatively, the same level of aggressiveness across all of the tracks, and nothing in the sense of instrumentals that would allow me to distinguish one song from the next. What I found the most disheartening though, was the writing. One of the best examples of this is the second track, Fire, Ready, Aim, where, out of a total of 29 lines, only two stand alone, and the rest are repeated. Even the album cover is just a weird close up of the arm from American Idiot.
Granted, Green Day’s music has been the same for the last twenty-ish years, but it was at a time when their sound still challenged what was popular, despite becoming mainstream. And, of course, their lyrics that resonated with Bush-era teens have lost their relevance in the 11 years since Bush was actually in office.
It isn’t impossible for bands to remain relevant, but it takes effort. The world has changed, and the teenage attitude with it. I don’t want to listen to a song that just says “everything is shit and I’m sad and the only thing I want to do is get high.” Yeah, Billie; we all do.
I want to hear something that is going to challenge my knowledge of our world as well as my understanding of music and art. I like music with the balls to speak the truth. But I also like music that is authentic and vulnerable. Father of All Motherfuckers doesn’t seem to achieve any of these qualities. Instead, songs like Father of All, Meet Me on the Roof, and I Was a Teenage Teenager felt manufactured. The spirit of Green Day that attracted me in the beginning was gone.
I want to continue to like Green Day and their new music. But I can’t expect much if instead of making something that is actually new, they call their tour with Fallout Boy the Hella Mega Tour. To me, listening to this album was like being stuck with a first grader who thinks they’re hot-shit because they know the word “fuck.” An outdated attempt to stay relevant.
-Richard Shapiro