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Nah fuck that shit. FOAM is a good Green Day record and a good record in general. If it's not your cuppa tea, that's fine. But I think people get hung up trying to fit Green Day into a box of their own creation. When in reality Green Day is whatever the three of them want it to be. When they want to take a left turn, they will!

100% this. I have been very vocal about not necessarily "hating" the album and to it's credit, the 2nd half of it is actually pretty decent. I honestly don't think Green Day have ever put out a "bad" album in general, but I think most of us can agree that it's a bad "Green Day" album. I mean, look at the quality of their discography from the very beginning compared to many other popular artists. They're very consistent with putting out good music and I mean all of it, not just the singles... but I strongly believe that compared to pretty much every other Green Day album (including side projects) FOAM is the lowest quality record the band has ever put out and the attitude that they displayed during this era wasn't necessarily doing it any favours. While I am ultimately glad I ended up with a few new Green Day songs that I really like, it probably should have been a side project instead in my honest opinion.

Though I think things are a bit more complicated, I largely agree. In some ways, it’s amazing that they were even able to ride the wave for that long. Most bands enter and exit what you could call their peak much more quickly. There’s also a few points I’d like to add: The trilogy had massive potential. The band definitely put an insane amount of effort into 21CB (mostly production-wise, I mean just listen to how many different layers, sounds and effects each song has), but it very nearly distroyed them (certainly Billie). I love how they sounded live in 09/10, but it’s hard to ignore that things were starting to go wrong behind the scenes, already then. The trilogy was therefore intended to be the logical next step, that is to say, a return to a more stripped down and light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek Green Day. Part of this could be felt at the beginning of the trilogy tour. It was an exciting time to be a Green Day fan. Unfortunately, the execution sucked, big time. And I honestly blame Cavallo for this too. For whatever reason, he either didn’t put his foot down (quite likely, seeing what he knew the band was capable of) or made all the wrong decisions, but either way, the end product came across as overblown, ill-judged and even spiritless in some areas, which coupled with the iHeart incident made for a complete PR disaster. RevRad was, as a packaged-deal, already a lot better, but it lacked the edge, punch and finish to make a GD record really shine and that is also down to production. In terms of where FOAM went wrong, I would agree with your points, but once again, I think production plays a huge role. And I don’t like any of Walker’s previous work, so this isn’t surprising to me. In many ways, the trilogy, RevRad and FOAM all seem like (well-intentioned) overcorrections. First it was, “hey it was a lot of fun making another epic AI style rock opera, but damn that was exhausting too, let’s go have some no-strings-attached fun with our next record” (*escalates*). Then it was, “ok, so people kinded hated all three albums with a passion, so how about we play it safe and make a classic Green Day album, but do it ourselves to have full control” (*lacks oomph and finish*). Lastly it was, “ok, so people kinda liked that, but compared to how much work we put in, it’s not doing as well commercially as we’re used to, we’re struggling to sell out arenas and some people said we were playing it too safe, guess it’s time to wing it yall looolllz”. Part of me thinks the band realised this, so whilst I’m not getting my hopes up too much, I am still interested to see where they’re going to take things for the upcoming record.

One of these days 😄

I know that most people think FOAM is mostly trash that can be thrown away but I'm very comfortable saying I think it is a genuinely good record. I enjoyed it when it was released and I still do. Is it my favorite? Probably not. I do however think it is overhated and I'm not afraid to say I like things that I find genuine joy in. Hyped for the new album & i hope that it hits me on an emotional level. Green Day are at their best when their music and lyrics hit home. I will say that something like RR definitely hit harder on an emotional level than FOAM did and I hope they can keep up that sort of magic we all know they are capable of capturing. i still get chills listening to Forever Now.

Figured some people would get a kick out of my Hella Mega story here. So, way back in 2020 I happened to win tickets from my local radio station. I wasn't even going to go if I hadn't won them because meh, big arena shows but since I won them I figured I might as well go. I figured they would be good tickets, maybe not up front but like pretty good seats. Well, last September finally rolls around after it got postponed and we show up and buy the preferred parking pass for the show so we could not be stuck in as much traffic getting out. I bring this up because we saw some people walking around outside with these yellow wristbands on and just for the hell of it we decided to fashion some fake wristbands out of strips of the parking pass and duct tape just to see if maybe it could get us backstage or vip or something. Anyways, I go and grab my tickets from the box office and we head inside. We find our seats and they're like as far away as you can get. So we figured, screw it let's go see if we can find some empty seats that are closer that we can sneak into. So we find some and we start looking at the GA pit area who are all wearing these bright yellow wristbands and notice that security isn't really paying attention, they're just looking to see if you've got the wristband or not. We look at the fake ones that we made just by accident and notice that the color is pretty close and if they aren't paying attention, we might just be able to sneak past. Long story short, we used the fake wristbands we made to sneak into the GA pit area. So in essence I got GA pit tickets for free!

To be fair, just a month into the album's release, the pandemic interrupted pretty much everything, and they couldn't make any promotional appearances on TV, and Billie only appeared on that virtual TV performance thing, and he actually played Graffitia. And he also used that time to record those No Fun Mondays covers.

Ah my favorite topic: The mess of the FOAM era. I get both sides of the argument here. On the one hand, I understand why people don't like it. I understand what people mean when they say it's a low tier GD release or it's a not a good GD record. And no, it's not their best. It doesn't have any deeper meaning for me and it's not a deep record. And that's fine. But holy shit the marketing was bad. If anything I'm fine with the record, but I HATED Crush's marketing. I don't care what the band says, Hella Mega was not their idea and you can't convince me otherwise. Maybe they wanted to do a monsters of rock type of thing, but I HIGHLY doubt they wanted to do it with Weezer and FOB. That being said, is FOAM a good record? Yeah, I think so! Is it their best and can it stand up to their other records? Not at all and that's okay! It's a dumb, fun album and it's okay to have music that's just nonsensical fun every once in a while. Do I think GD can do better? Yes, I know they can, but to me it sounded like they were actually having fun here. For years, I felt GD were living in the shadow of AI, constantly trying to top that or reach those heights. With FOAM, it felt like they went fuck it and just did what they wanted. Plus, it did see them try some new things - nothing earth shattering, but new for GD. But I agree that I still want them to put their all into a record. Though I don't think GD should just always take their music super seriously. If they want to make a dumb party record, cool. If they want to make something that's more complex and has deeper meaning? Awesome! I'm here for it. I just don't want GD to be all serious, all the time. I definitely agree with @Clockwise about people trying to fit GD into whatever box they want. I hated all the cries of this isn't a real GD record!!! It's not the GD record you wanted and that's okay. It's fine you don't like, but I also think people are overreacting when they treat FOAM as the worst thing they ever heard. And as @Insomniac1984 stated, there's a good chance people will change their mind about FOAM. It's happened with every single GD release. All it takes is for the latest album to drop for people to go, actually the previous album isn't that bad/is underrated.

I wouldn’t say it’s a bad album. It’s fun. I enjoy it, but mainly for the catchy songs than for anything deeper, but that’s not a bad thing, it’s just that I find deeper layers in other Green Day albums and that gives them more relisten value and I have more of a connection to them. It would work as another Foxboro album. They’ve borrowed a lot from a bunch of 60s songs for both records.

It wasn't. The videos were pretty funny even at the time and no one made any kind of thing about it. I think Billie just had a momentary anti-capitalist impulse seeing the sponsor car sitting there alongside the audience. He decided in the moment to take a swing at it. He didn't even make a dent which caused Mike to make a funny comment at the time about how "Subarus are rock solid!" It was funny and no one cared.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day 😉

When I saw the Hot! tag on the thread I was like finally they must have announced something! Not today I guess 😅

Wow! I was waiting for "and then we made fake red wristbands that brought us backstage with the bands and got in a limo with lot of booze and woke up in the same bed as Billie in a unknown hotel room."

When Google gives you the biggest/best compliment you could ever imagine.

I agree with that. As a Foxboro Hot Tubs album, with a tiny bit of tweaking and a more raw, less gimmicky feel (like losing the pew pew lasers) it could have been a decent little follow up to SD&R. Like I said, I am glad I got some of those songs, and they're definitely fun... but in terms of the band's main project legacy, I just don't think it's worthy of living up to the standards they've set for themselves. I think it's pretty safe to say that the whole era just came off as pretty disingenuous and I hope that 1972 marks the beginning of a new, more genuine and honest era for the band. No one knows how long we are on this earth for, and this late into the band's career, I strongly feel like there's no room for tarnishing their legacy with albums that every member can't unanimously agree that they're proud of and fully believe in.

I think/desperately hope Crush have realised that they can't treat Green Day like Weezer and Fall Out Boy and expect fans to like it

I should be posting this in the Fangirls thread, but Billie's voice always kicks me right in the feels whenever new Green Day music is released. Holding off the vocals until the proper release is fine by me.

It's hard for us to put a grasp on exactly what happened, but from my perspective I think you pretty much nailed it. None of these albums are bad, in fact Revrad is my 3rd favourite album behind AI and 21CB but could they have been better? Absolutely. Whatever the band do next, I'm sure I'll like, because again, there isn't a single record they've put out that I genuinely dislike aside from a couple of songs on Dos and whatever "Oh Yeah" was. Yes, from a vocal standpoint some are more cringy than others, but I'm here for the music. The vocals are just the icing on the cake for me. I'm really grateful that they're even still doing new music at all, but I just think it's late now whether they want to admit it or not and they need to start thinking about how they want to be remembered. If that's by putting out stuff like FOAM, then fine.. It's what they'll do, but I don't think it is how they want to be remembered and them already completely ditching the album's songs and marketing mid tour and going in a completely different direction with 1972 seems to be living proof of that.

I don’t know if you can standardize a green day song… i mean, here comes the shart has everything you would expect a green day song to have and yet…

It's very funny to me how many people equate their own opinions on the music to the level of skill, time, or care the band puts into creating it. It comes off a little bit insulting when people insinuate they don't try as hard anymore just because they don't like the songs. Is it not more realistic to think your taste and the band's taste has simply diverged over time?

This 100%. I think Green Day are one of Crush Management's biggest bands or at least when they first went over to them they were and I don't think they (Crush) knew how to handle that. They seem to have a one size fits all approach to everyone they manage and it's cringe Also I don't think it's GD that want the big bucks from a tour like Hella Mega, it's Crush!

I wouldn't say FOAM is bad, I love it, but it's not maximum Green Day

The bolded part reminded me the times when WARNING was released... so many people hated that record. However, I enjoyed it almost the whole record. Time went by, and now tracks I considered bad/meh like "Misery" or "Hold On" are underrated GD gems. Maybe, and I just say maybe, this could happen to FOAM. Nowadays it has happened to the Trilogy, too.

From Jake (anniversary of his terrible accident)

It was the mix of their team desperately trying to make them look hip and the band seemingly less than confident about their new music… I wish the spray tan never happened, that was the lowest point i hope Crush got a lesson from that and this ride doesn’t repeat again when 1972 promo comes

I was one of the people huddle around him when he was hitting the car. I have the video somewhere. I'm not sure if it was staged, but everyone in the area was laughing about it when he did it. If you look at the swings too, they definitely seemed a bit weak. Then again, he's swinging this guitar and could've easily hit someone in the head. I'm sure he realized that and had to work around that.

I was thinking when reading the comments "how have I not heard of this?" and "holy shit this sounds super serious, he destroyed someone's car? wtf!" Then I watched the video you linked and now I know why I didn't hear about it. This is just Green Day being Green Day. I don't see anything wrong or controversial about it. It's not even a comparison to the iheart thing.

Maybe they feel they aren’t a museum piece just yet

I think they're the same incident. It happened at one of the shows on the Summer North American RevRad Tour I think it's here This shows it better https://fb.watch/f3tYfT_W4J/

I just hope 1972 has a consistent vibe or feel to it. Most of their albums nail a specific feeling and sound. FOAM felt all over the place like a compilation.

The pandemic happened later. The bulk of their promotion happened from September 2019 to February 2020 and we had no to little idea of the pandemic at that time. They were leaving to start the tour in Asia in March so I’d say by February promotion was mostly over. I agree the pandemic did a number on their psyches as for us all but Billie powered through with No Fun Mondays and charity performances and in some ways he found new purpose and seemed in better spirits than he did in 2019. The accident with SWMRS was a thing that happened late October but that didn’t account for this whole time period. Whatever was going on with them at that time, I’m just glad they seemed to have come out of it now Lydia stands by her story, band broke up and dispersed to the four corners of the US, Joey got married and moved to London. The End.

Great point! And this could've contributed to supposed their lack of enthusiasm about the record when they did do interviews. There's a pandemic going on, every aspect of your life has changed. And when a big part of your job is connecting with people and suddenly that's taken away from you, it's draining. I think the SWMRS car accident also happened around that time, so that probably weighed on Billie's mind at least.

@The Grohl Agree with you completely. The band even said during promo that they're always progressing, but sometimes they have to progress sideways lol. Here's the exciting thing about FOAM - even if the record doesn't work for you, it proves that they have creative gas left in the tank. They are still doing experimenting creatively and trying new things that excite them! If we got Rev Rad part two that would have been a creative death rattle. And they could do that so damn easily. So this is a good sign, because if they're still growing and changing, eventually they'll put out an awesome album that you love.

Does anyone else remember people thinking Closing Time by Semisonic was actually Green Day? When I first got into Green Day it came up on whatever website I was using to listen in 2007 (Radio something?) and I was clueless, so I just assumed it was Green Day and added it to my playlist. Then I realised it wasn't, took it off the playlist and forgot about it. I saw someone talking about the song recently and listened to see if I remembered it, but it didn't sound anything like I remembered. I assumed I'd got the wrong song and Googled it to see if there were others. One of the suggested results was "closing time green day" though! I thought it was just some error on that specific website I used, but it was apparently a thing. There are even YouTube videos titled "Closing Time by Green Day" and people coming up with excuses in the comments about them working together on the song, even though they obviously didn't. Found this Reddit thread about it: I've no idea why this was a thing. It doesn't really sound anything like Green Day.

I think the FOAM album itself was just ok, but something about that era was so cringe. The spray tan was the cherry on top lol Edit: Oh shit, is my avatar pic from the FOAM era? Just realized it might be Oh well, he still looks good

I suppose there is a risk of it becoming a GD museum given their profile as opposed to the likes of Pennywise say.

I mean it's not really a matter of them not trying as hard anymore. I think they do still try hard and I've not said otherwise. The trilogy was possibly the most effort they put into a project. It's just with how many songs were on the trilogy, it would be unreasonable to expect every song to be on the same level as all their prior albums. RevRad was largely a return to form, at least in terms of consistency as the vast majority of tracks on that album easily exceed that bar of quality with the exception of maybe Youngblood and Ordinary World. FOAMF is the only album they've released where I think a significant portion of the album doesn't exceed the expected quality of a Green Day song. Idk if it needs to be said but of course this is just my opinion.

I just don't think anything is quite as it seems in the press and should be taken with a grain of salt

"Guitar incident"? And he didn't quit he was fired after several back to back media mishaps on the road It was Spain but you are correct. Those were the two PR nightmares that precipitated his firing. Billie beating up a car with a guitar? That's just a day at the office. I think the decision was made in such a difficult time and in the heat of the moment that I could see Billie saying "Fuck this we can do it ourselves!" but then cooler heads prevailed and Crush was presented to them. I believe it was their idea to do a stadium tour because it is one of the few things they had yet to do in their accomplished career and they needed a manager with enough compatible bands on their roster that arranging it would be easy. So Crush made sense to them at the time and they were under pressure to make a decision in the middle of a world tour when these transitions normally do not happen.

Wasn't it thought that the cancellation of the Glasgow show and the incident in Portugal made GD fire him? They signed with Crush only a couple days after the Subaru incident (or that's when it was publicly announced).

This reminds me of using things like Limewire (>_>) and downloading things like "Paint It Black - by The Doors"

Fixed it

That and the sexual assault accusations against Joey

It's definitely a good record, just not a good Green Day record. It's still better than a lot of the other music I hear on the radio these days. However, in terms of a casual audience perspective, most people seem to not have any good things to say about it and I think that's too important to ignore when literally any of their albums at this stage in their career could be their last as the band as we know them. Would you be satisfied if FOAM was the last Green Day record ever made? I know I wouldn't and I doubt they would be satisfied about that either. I'm not trying to be overly negative, just realistic. Starting with 1972 I think the band really should start taking what they put out a lot more seriously and start treating every album as if it were their last one, at least when it comes to quality assurance.

The harmonica makes Hold On and Walking Alone sound so Beatlesque!!! I hope 1972 has the harmonica and some lush piano ballads too!!!

Man, a Metallica / GD collab would be sick. I get the feeling it wouldn't happen this late in their careers though.

The exposed vocals tracks are another example of this. Gives me goosebumps I don't think anyone really knows for sure. From someone who hasn't been able to stop smoking myself when I see Billie smoking he looks like at some point he's been "serious smoker". Also if you're trying not to drink it's a good idea not to try to stop both together or you could be setting yourself up for a fall. It always surprises me when I see Mike with a cigarette these days

I love Christian's Inferno, but hating it isn't an unpopular opinion. This live performance was amazing