Green Day’s back with another awful album. After (arguably) the worst thing to happen to 2020, their album Father of All, they needed to redeem themselves to their fans. It seems that incredibly low bar was the only one they tried to clear. Blending 80s jock-rock, early 2000s pop-punk, and “old man yells at cloud” political sentiment, their fourteenth studio album, Saviors, is a 45-minute trek full of lazy songwriting, contradictory politics, and a desperate attempt to return to form for the classic pop-punk band.
“The American Dream is Dead!” starts Saviors with a dud. This four-minute session of pitch-corrected whining about TikTok and taxes over a three-chord progression unfortunately sets the tone for the album perfectly. The next few tracks are forgettable, even stealing hooks from P!nk (case in point: Green Day’s “One Eyed Bastard” and P!nk’s “So What”) and selling themselves as the next Weezer (Green Day’s Bobby Sox and Any Weezer Song You Can Think Of). How creatively bankrupt does a band have to be to recycle things that sort of worked for other pop artists?
This record seems to be stuck between bad 2000s pop, worse 80s rock, and its need to call itself punk. There’s the occasional ballad reminiscent of 21st Century Breakdown, but none of them hit the same as they did then. Billie Joe’s lyricism throughout reads as dull and lazy. Hooks feel meaningless, vocals sound half-assed, and the potential in almost all of the melodies present feels all the more squandered because of it. It’s sad, especially compared to Green Day’s classic albums like Dookie or American Idiot. It may be disingenuous to compare Saviors to Green Day’s best projects, but ultimately I don’t think it’s much of a stretch considering this was marketed as their return to form.
Saviors felt bloated, boring, and downright insulting at times. As someone who grew up around Green Day’s music, I keep hoping for something fresh and interesting from the band, something they haven’t delivered since the 2000s. Like a copy of a copy of a copy, this album is a shell of old Green Day, trying to live up to former glory and failing miserably. I came away feeling disappointed and relieved that it was finally over.
Overall Score: 3.6/10
