Why do you think 21CB didn't do as well as American Idiot?

[karma1215]

The album is great to me personally..I love it and it didn't do to shabby it won Best Rock Album which is awesome but I feel that American Idiot had more validity to it. People could relate to it more. We had a bad president for 8 years and we were in a war that was based on false allegations and lies...American Idiot just spoke more to people on a personal level than 21st Century Breakdown did.

[iwroteholdencaulfield!]

21CB doesn't have BOBD

[in_your_face]

21st CB is BETTER THAN American Idiot in my opinion. i dunno what you guys mean by these 'crap promotion' and 'material', but personally i like 21st CB. honestly, i'm sick of listening to AI. i hardly listen to songs off AI. 21st CB is more entertaining, and really great stuff. AI is about random characters created by Green Day frontman. of coarse, i love the story and the characters, it's quite interesting. but still, 21st CB is more than a rock opera, it's got something special in it, and i can feel it when i listen to this album! <33

[Bastard of 1967]

Take my word on it. More sales, more promotion. They feed in to each other. I promise you that TCB had a MUCH MUCH MUCH larger initial marketing campaign (money-wise) than American Idiot did. Not a little more, a lot. This is fact. When the album stops selling, the label puts much less in to marketing. That said, they are still marketing singles and they are doing well. TCB will never be the success that American Idiot was and that's just that. Both, FANTASTIC one in a million records though.

Adam - I've said it before (I think), I'll say it again -- your inside-the-industry perspective is something really unique and is always a breath of fresh air around here. It's making me rethink my opinion about how the album was promoted, and I also want to toss out a couple other ideas and get your take on them.

First - we as the more fanatical, die-hard end of the Green Day fan spectrum -- perhaps we (individually and collectively) had too many different expectations for what 21CB "should" be like, and then the band surprises us and takes most of the album in a completely unanticipated direction. To them (and to the critics), that's innovative and fresh. Take KYE for example -- many of the comments here discussed how out of place it seemed in the album, how sparse the verses are, and how repetitive the chorus is. But in hindsight (including last year's Verizon Center show in DC), it just kicks ass when you hear it done live, it is such a perfect arena-rock song...and from an artistic perspective, paired with RHS it makes up one key piece of the album's overall message -- that nobody is going to be able to save the world until we all fix the shit that's going on inside our own heads. Yet this style of song and this use of it in the album somehow seemed to disappoint a lot of us, especially for the first single.

Second - what gives with the single airplay in the U.S.? One of the adult contemporary pop/rock stations in DC didn't touch anything on 21CB with the exception of 21 Guns, which hit their playlists very late as compared to the single's release date, disappeared for awhile, and then only reappeared very recently after AIOB proved that it's got some staying power. None of the other singles -- KYE, EJN, the title track, or even LOTAG have been picked up, and that still strikes me as a huge hole in the album's overall promotion strategy.

[ifmemoryserves]

21CB doesn't have BOBD

lol can we just put this as the official reasoning?

[Guest]

21CB doesn't have BOBD

THIS And lack of promotion

[armatage]

There were a lost of great minds spoken, and I'd like to say something myself if it wasn't already mentioned (didn't read everything, sorry). I agreed about the singles and the gap between the albums.

First, I guess people weren't expecting another same-built rock opera. (The band didn't change too much: yeah they've got another characters, they have a bit different lifestory, but once again, they're lost in all the mess.) I think people were waiting for something pretty different now than AI was. That's the thing I don't really like about the guys - in one interview I herad/read they're up to another rock opera or something 'cause that's best what they can do. No. Way. They're going to run themselves down again.

Another thing (well, I'm just gonna compare this LOUSY.): you can't ever make two huge explosions one after another. Look, like, Hirosima was ruined and nobody ever dropped the bomb on the city again. So that's like what guys did wrong. They did the same album structure twice, too bad with too big time gap between that it would make too much of sense.

And, maybe people got sick of Green Day? You know, someone out there said the band was everywhere: the music playing at the shops, on TV, the clothing, pens, etc.

Everything gets worn out. Rock got 'worn out' and everybody started to like pop. American Idiot kinda got worn out, too. Maybe the band got too? (Yeah I do believe it didn't to us - fans, but for the masses... I bet they got sick/bored with all that.) The stupid nowadays music will get uninteresting for the masses in some time, something else will come then. But now it's freaking hard to beat all the crap that's on in the music world. Kinda sucks for the guys, they're impossible to compare to the stuff we're hearing now. Maybe another record will help if it's not a bit transformated rock opera again.

[GDM]

Too true. Also I think Billie was produced out as well. Vig made his voice sound thin and absent. Album wasn't as good, nor produced as well. Song order both on the album and by release wasn't nearly as good but IT DOES have two of my favorite GD songs on it with HSAHG, BTL, and a few others. It wasn't a near perfect album like AI.

I absolutely adore Before the Lobotomy, that's for sure. And yes, Billie does sound a little thin. Though I saw his Fallon performance of LOTAG, and he sounded exactly like the album. For a second I wondered if he was lipsynching, it sounded so good, lol.

[Eeefaa.]

Hmmm, random thought= sometimes when I'm bored (really, really bored) I sit flicking through music channels on TV until Green Day come on. Generally it's not more than an hour of waiting. When 21stCBD, EJN (I saw that on some crummy pop channel once) and LOTAG were all played when the videos first started coming out. I think I even saw Macy's Day Parade once. So the videos are played.

[Mar]

Musically I feel 21CB is better but it just doesn't have the same impact as American Idiot. Also American Idiot was sort of the first of its kind, in its on way...

But yeah the promotion for 21CB was shit

I do think a lot of people looked at 21Cb with a groan and an eyeroll, since it was looked at as another "concept album," which may have negatively impacted peoples' opinions on it.

[IscoredWaddlesgoals]

Promotion wise, I don't think it was lack of money - it just came across as cack handed. Things like this in Australia: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/06/20/1244918233369.html obviously don't do your reputation any good. Plus, they didn't do any major TV performances in the UK when it first came out. Jools Holland was totally missed, Jonathan Ross was left until later and Abbey Road wasn't exactly a major sensation outside of here. Instead of video exclusives on Channel 4, we got a programme that got shown a few times between 'Lets Put Popstars On The Hollyoaks Set And Try To Disguise The Fact It's All MDF' and 'Katy Perry's Top 47 Songs With The In The Title' on a channel hardly anyone watches.

[IscoredWaddlesgoals]

I respectfully disagree, again. This is a counter point to the marketing being a problem view. Fuck, they were down to street level promotions (and very cool ones I might add. That is bad ass). And the old adage about any publicity is good publicity is true with stuff like this. They took a street level promotion and got it in a magazine, possibly by accident, possibly by design, but this shows creative marketing.

You don't think it makes them look BAD or something do you? They don't care about being reprimanded by some city official about a "misunderstanding" about the legality of spray painting the street walls with very cool TCB murals. (Ironicly, somebody posted CASH COW on the mural). Ha. Kind of like the new pop-punks scribbling "Billie must die" at the bathroom wall at Gilman,

EDIT: You got me checking some of these out. Bad ass. To me, this is good promotion.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_C-EfT1Sdh94/ScsbhfGHl8I/AAAAAAAAAgM/zjxl2kqBePA/s400/ShepardFairey.JPG

http://images.smh.com.au/ftsmh/ffximage/2009/06/20/greendaygraffiti_wideweb__470x313,0.jpg]

It doesn't so much make them look bad, but stupid. Whichever way you look at it, no one wants the words 'cash cow' spray painted by a graffiti artist on a professionally painted mural of your album art.

[sammers93]

I agree on almost all of the stuff that's already been said. I also think they chose wrong singles. I don't think Know Your Enemy was no way near good enough to be first single, and the video is just too damn boring. The American Idiot single followed by BOBD and Holiday was just one huuge party and also pretty suprising.

Warner has promoted the album in a bad way, and also they didn't have the "wow, they're back!"-effect that they had when American Idiot was released. That doesn't mean 21CB is not as good as AI is, it's just different. I mean, they can't make the same album twice.

^ Couldn't have said it better myself. I liked 21CB, but American Idiot came out at a better time.

[dreaming]

To me, I think AI is just more emotional. Or say more personal. Songs like JOS, WMUWSU, letterbomb, Homecoming, Whatsername, etc just keep pouring out some powerful emotional vibes when you listen to them, truly and naturally, you can't explain that through music theory. And by saying emotion I do not only mean love for sombody or feeling lonely or sth just like that, but also the feeling of doubt, anger, desperatation and impulse to make a revolution. Essential and basic. The emotions revealed here do not appear to your everyday life, they are kind of dramatic, or say they are gathered from different memorable moments of one's entire life. But to me that's what makes a masterpiece of art. The most important element of art is the echo of emotion, not the echo of philosophy, although which is also an indispensable fact to achieve a masterpiece of art.

And Believe me I love every single song of 21CB. GD is always making perfect music to me. But to most first listeners KYE is not a catching tune, and its power doesn't pour out — you need to dig it.

I think maybe sth about the band's condition. After all they've gain so much success from AI. So in fact they are not in a state of tragedy any more, which led to a lack(relatively) of emotion.

And they are getting more and more mature, dealing better and better with their emotions and discontent, thinking more and more about social affairs, not from an angle of personal feelings as in AI, but more from responsibility and leadership as a social member. That makes this album more philosophy than emotional at the first place, so you rarely get the same level of emotional echo as AI when you first listen to it, which may lower its opportunity of popurlarity. But this actually comes from the different concepts of AI and 21CB. GD was not going to make 21CB the 2nd Vol. of AI. They did want to make sth more socially inspirational. Maybe just a bit lack of emotional states(conditions).

And I think maybe sth about the producer? I know little about these two producers, but Rob Covallo seems better at pointing out or creating these emotional bits from their music? I don't know. Just a guess.

I love both albums while I think AI just can get more immediate echos and attentions which leds to more popularity.

I rarely speak English so hope you can get what I mean.

[IscoredWaddlesgoals]

Fair enough. The cash cow part is no good, but you can't blame them for that. Well I guess you can but then we would be the Gilman's person that wrote "Billie must die". I don't think it makes them look bad personally.

Sheffield, eh? Is it all empty steal factories and overweight men going Full Monty? Ha. JK. Loved that movie and just saw your locale.

I thought you'd be all arsey then and you weren't. Am pleasantly surprised.

Aye - we've got many a steel mill, (no thanks to Nick Clegg) although not too much half naked men thankfully. I didn't know many people outside the UK had heard of it.

[Eighty.]

Who said that?

I prefer 21st CB lyrics.

[Bastard of 1967]

EDIT 2: Don't tell Green Day it's not more successful. They are making more money on this tour than they have made in their entire careers bar none, X5. So, it's all how you want to measure the success. The question posed by Andres in this thread might be a flawed question to a certain degree if you take the presupposition that TCB was not as successful. Depends who you ask In reality, I know it wasn't but just thought of that. They are wrangling in the peeps at the shows which is hard to do now-a-days but that's probably still from AI mostly.

So in a nutshell, it all boils down to what your definition of "successful" is. I agree that Andres appears to have presented us with a loaded question. More open-ended would be "do you think 21CB was more or less 'successful' than AI and why?"

Next time you're in our neck of the woods I gotta buy you a beer or something. That was a great post.

[oneofthemrazorbacks]

So in a nutshell, it all boils down to what your definition of "successful" is. I agree that Andres appears to have presented us with a loaded question. More open-ended would be "do you think 21CB was more or less 'successful' than AI and why?"

Next time you're in our neck of the woods I gotta buy you a beer or something. That was a great post.

I completely agree. Success could be deemed on so much more than album sales.

[Fuzz]

EDIT 2: Don't tell Green Day it's not more successful. They are making more money on this tour than they have made in their entire careers bar none, X5. So, it's all how you want to measure the success. The question posed by Andres in this thread might be a flawed question to a certain degree if you take the presupposition that TCB was not as successful. Depends who you ask In reality, I know it wasn't but just thought of that. They are wrangling in the peeps at the shows which is hard to do now-a-days but that's probably still from AI mostly.

They are making more money because they are charging more for tickets. Not because they're selling out larger venues. Not to mention, the majority of all of last years tickets were sold before the album came out. Much of the hype around touring has less to do with the album they're supporting, and more to do with the fact that there will always be that group of people eager to see the band. I'm not saying they aren't related, obviously if 21CB was a terrible album they would have sold less tickets.

My question would be flawed if 21CB would have sold more copies than American Idiot within the same time frame. That is how I'm framing my question. I didn't say the album was a flop, obviously it's pretty successful, it just hasn't sold nearly as many copies as American Idiot, and I wanted to get people's view on why that was.

So far this has been a pretty great discussion. We record the podcast tonight and are going to be quoting some of the posts here in our discussion.

[Bastard of 1967]

I think maybe sth about the band's condition. After all they've gain so much success from AI. So in fact they are not in a state of tragedy any more, which led to a lack(relatively) of emotion.

I do see your point, but I wouldn't lay the credit/blame for it on Green Day itself inasmuch as I'd place it with Butch Vig's production. Muting Mike's bass riffs was probably the worst thing he could have done. I'm not as much of a stickler for how he produced Billie's vocals, but I do accept the point that Adam and others have made that making Billie's rich, powerful tenor sound thinner and more "tinny" may have done a disservice. It stripped out a lot of the emotional content that *is* in 21CB's lyrics. Case in point: compare WMUWSE with The Static Age or 21 Guns. All three are just *fantastic* songs. But WMUWSE has Mike's deep bass lines driving Billie's cracking voice in the chorus -- and if Billie's voice and the lyrical content don't absolutely fucking KILL you when you listen to that, just focus on Mike's bass pounding the sadness, the "what's the goddamn use", the mournfulness home and it'll either send a chill up your spine or put you in tears. Or both.

Now compare to The Static Age...in that song I don't really feel the emotional pull that I think I "should" be. That synergy between Billie's vocals, the lyrics, Tre's kick-drum, and Mike's bass just isn't there, or isn't working the same way. The song doesn't hit me 'til that key change right before the last verse, and *that*'s where I really feel it...."All I wanna know is a goddamn thing...." -- the chording change-up, Billie's nailing his high register in this pleading, yearning sort of way that we've never heard from him before, describing the dead and buried dreams of yesterday, "the silence of the rotten, forgotten..." it's in *this* part of the song, and only in this part of the song, that it all comes together. Everything that came before it, though brilliant lyrically, gets stifled in the mix. 21 Guns suffers similarly, and is best explained by comparing the studio track to its live performances and also how it's performed in AIOB. Amping Mike's bass and Tre's repetitive high-hat crashes back into the chorus literally changes the song, and it always nails me when I hear it live. In the show (or more particularly, the re-arrangement that Billie recorded with the broadway cast), the use of the choir as additional backup for him in just.the.right.places also changes the song and adds that layer of worn-out, dog-tired, beaten-down, emotional exhaustion that the studio track is missing.

Would love to hear 21CB remastered one day. That'd be epic.

[oneofthemrazorbacks]

looking forward to the podcast already have fun recording

[Bastard of 1967]

looking forward to the podcast already have fun recording

Ditto - this thread's been awesome!!

[1039slappygirl]

I don't really think this album "didn't do as well as American Idiot". In a comercial way, at least. Maybe the break Green Day had between American Idiot and 21CB caused some fans lost interest in the band and get into other stuff. Or expect a similar to American Idiot album. I know 21CB it's a conceptual album too, but certainly it's lyrics talk about other things, as Billie Joe said "what's happened the last 4 years". So the rage against Bush may have been bigger at it's time than the rage against the finantial crisis and the sense of hope this album it's trying to give us. The sounds are different too, with a piano here and a violin over there. It could be several stuff what made this album not so popular with the teenagers or the people who doesn't even know the band. But at least the fans around the world bought this album, and for me, it couldn't have been better than it is.

[keefe]

American Idiot came outta nowhere, and it just took everyone by surprise. 21CB was very hyped as the sequel to American Idiot and was called ambitious and powerful. The promotion was crap and the singles are nowhere near as good as they should be. American Idiot had a stronger theme whereas 21CB was very direct and sort of a lost plot in my opinion.

[ihaveapenisbitch!]

To be honest I think it was premotion however looking at the music industry the way it is at the moment how many people bought the album legally instead of downloading it. You cfan not judge a band anymore on record sales alone, there is no money left in record sales people don't see music as a product anymore its a service. Where as look at their ticket sales, they've shot up through the fucking roof, they've just done a stadium tour! Not many other bands can do that. Its misleading to say 21CBD never did as well as AI when your not taking in to account the illegal downloads.

Record sales are no longer a bench mark for judging bank popularity.