"JESUS OF SUBURBIA" GREEN DAY (2004)

This month on Twitter, @sotachetan hosts #BrandedInSongs – which is a head-on collision of my personal world of music and my professional world of branding and advertising. The challenge is to simply pick a song with a brand name in its lyrics or title. I added one more criteria to my picks, which is this: the songs themselves must be as iconic as the brands they mention. No filler here.

Super simple song structures. Basic three-piece layering. What Green Day may lack in terms of instrumental complexity they more than make up with Billy Joe Armstrong’s lyrical prowess. Truly an underrated songwriter, the Green Day frontman is the writer of two critically acclaimed rock operas. I’ve covered other songs from American Idiot on Mental Jukebox, and now’s the time to pick one more.

If “Jesus of Suburbia” feels somewhat constrained musically, maybe it’s because it’s solely based on four chords. Fortunately, the sonics help, particularly with Armstrong’s guitar riffs throughout the track. But, like most Green Day songs, the best part is the words. The character known as the Jesus of Suburbia seems not too far fetched. The lyrics paint a picture of a suburban antagonist through three movements – from angsty to idyllic to angsty once again over the course of nine glorious minutes.

“I'm the son of rage and love. The Jesus of Suburbia. The bible of none of the above On a steady diet of Soda pop and Ritalin.”

"WHATSERNAME" GREEN DAY (2004)

You can get off to a fast start. You can sustain your opener with the main course, not filler. But can you end on a high note? Sometimes I wonder if recording a strong closer is the most difficult thing to pull off when it comes to album rock. When it comes to the cream of the crop in music, I can think of more strong openers than strong closers. Nonetheless, I still have my favorites which I’ll be featuring on Mental Jukebox all month.

Before American Idiot, I had nearly written off Green Day. They had some solid songs over the years, but they all felt like these one-off expressions that were great for just a moment in time. American Idiot changed all that. It was the antithesis of everything that turned me away from the band. As a concept album, American Idiot presented the narrative of a disillusioned teenager following 9/11 and the Iraq War. These weren’t two-minute punk rock songs. It was a story. And the songs were often combined into longer pieces, taking on the form of an opera, not a traditional rock album, which closed with the oft-overlooked “Whatsername”.

American Idiot is full of great moments, like “Holiday”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and the title track. But “Whatsername” had this wit and charm to it that the other tracks didn’t. It’s a reminder that the simplest of chord progressions can still do powerful things in music when other dynamics within a song are shifting. It had this quiet-loud dynamic thing happening that launched the song out of its romantic daze into the bridge, almost out of nowhere. “Whatsername” is a modern-day punk rock song because it captured all these complicated states: anger, despondence, regret.

“THE REGRETS ARE USELESS IN MY MIND.”

"GOOD RIDDANCE (TIME OF YOUR LIFE)" GREEN DAY (1997)

I generally gravitate to the music first before the lyrics. But as a writer, I still marvel at well-spun verses and choruses. This month, I’m joining the music Twitter community in #31DaySongLyricChallenge

Day 3

Billy Joe Armstrong doesn’t get the songwriting credit he deserves. I believe many music fans have written them off, mainly based off their simplistic punk-oriented instrumentation. But he’s written two rock opera albums as well as this ballad classic, demonstrating a knack for stringing the right words together.

“So take the photographs and still-frames in your mind. Hang it on a shelf and good health and good time.

Tattoo's of memories and dead skin on trial, go. For what it's worth it was worth all the while.

It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I hope you had the time of your life.”

"WHATSERNAME" GREEN DAY (2004)

Each day in December, I’ll be reflecting back on a song from the 2000’s. The decade saw the return of post-punk and the popularization of folk music, all while some of music’s biggest acts gained their indie footing. Thankfully, it’s a period that I can look back at fondly without cringing. #31DaysOf2000sSongs

Before American Idiot, I had nearly written off Green Day. They had some solid songs over the years, but they all felt like these one-off expressions that were great for just a moment in time. American Idiot changed all that. It was the antithesis of everything that turned me away from the band. As a concept album, American Idiot presented the narrative of a disillusioned teenager following 9/11 and the Iraq War. These weren’t two-minute punk rock songs. It was a story. And the songs were often combined into longer pieces, taking on the form of an opera, not a traditional rock album, which closed with the oft-overlooked “Whatsername”.

American Idiot is full of great moments, like “Holiday”, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, “Wake Me Up When September Ends” and the title track. But “Whatsername” had this wit and charm to it that the other tracks didn’t. It’s a reminder that the simplest of chord progressions can still do powerful things in music when other dynamics within a song are shifting. It had this quiet-loud dynamic thing happening that launched the song out of its romantic daze into the bridge, almost out of nowhere. “Whatsername” is a modern-day punk rock song because it captured all these complicated states: anger, despondence, regret.

“The regrets are useless in my mind.”

"GOOD RIDDANCE (TIME OF YOUR LIFE)" GREEN DAY (1997)

Each day in November, I’m revisiting a song from the 90’s — a decade that was a sorta coming of age for me. In that span, I experienced high school, college and my time as a young single guy in New York City. It was a decade of ups and downs, and the music never stopped playing during that span. It was always there with me. #30DaysOf90sSongs

Green Day is a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. Many serious music listeners have written them off citing over-simplistic instrumentation and chord progressions. But I don’t mind so much that they’re simple. They are, after all, a punk rock band. No one ever gave The Ramones any grief despite them being guilty of the same musical “infractions”. What may actually be overlooked is the fact that Billy Joe Armstrong is quite a talented and underrated storyteller. For proof, just listen to Green Day’s rock operas American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown. And then there was also that one anomaly of a song, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”.

“Good Riddance” was written about an old girlfriend of Armstrong’s who left the country. But, over the years, it has become a song for all of us. It’s a graduation song, a breakup song, a wedding slide show song, a college reunion song, the list goes on. It’s also usually the last song played at a Green Day concert. It’s a song that ushers us back in time. Not just in a purely sugarcoated nostalgic way, but in a way that takes all the good with all the bad. Somehow this song has helped me put all of it in its proper perspective.

“So take the photographs and still frames in your mind. Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time. Tattoos of memories, and dead skin on trial. For what it's worth, it was worth all the while.”