Green Day's Revolution Radio turned ten on October 7th. It came after the ¡Uno! ¡Dos! ¡Tré! trilogy, three albums released in a few months in 2012 that Billie Joe Armstrong later admitted had no real direction. Work on the follow-up started in 2014, and the band recorded it at OTIS in Oakland and produced it themselves. It was their first album since 2009's 21st Century Breakdown without Rob Cavallo behind the board, and Armstrong described the goal as stripping things down instead of reinventing the band.
It worked. Revolution Radio debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 95,000 units, Green Day's third album to do so, and it also went to number one in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Canada and New Zealand.
Fernando Olivares recently revisited the comeback album for Never a Phase Network. Here is how it holds up, song by song.
"Somewhere Now"
It starts with a clean, wistful guitar before the band kicks in, and there's some of The Who's bombast in the way it builds. The song is a gripe about growing up and asks where your soul went along the way. The chorus is big and easy to sing along to, and the album comes back to this song near the end of the album."Bang Bang"
The first single and the first song Armstrong wrote for the album. It's the fastest and most aggressive track on the record, and Armstrong himself called it one of the best punk songs he's written. It looks at mass shootings in America mixed with narcissistic social media, through the fame-hungry mindset of a shooter. It gave the band their 10th number one on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart."Revolution Radio"
The title track keeps the energy of "Bang Bang" and points it at the media and how social issues get handled. It's short, 3:00, and straightforward punk."Say Goodbye"
Heavy swinging riff and hand claps, with lyrics about police violence over a tune that sounds upbeat. It recalls "Holiday" from American Idiot, and AllMusic singled out its heavy-booted swing as one of the album's simplest and best moments."Outlaws"
At just over five minutes it's the second longest song here and the most nostalgic one. Billie Joe looks back at being a teenage delinquent while the band goes big on the chorus. Jon Fratelli of The Fratellis has a co-writing credit on the music. Some critics found it too melodramatic, and the chorus does lean in hard, but the longing in it comes through."Bouncing Off the Wall"
At 2:40 it's a quick one, with a trumpet from Ronnie Blake in the mix. It sounds like the looser, faster Green Day from earlier in their career, and it's a good reset after "Outlaws.""Still Breathing"
The centerpiece. Armstrong has said the song follows a junkie on the verge of death, a gambler about to lose everything and a wounded soldier, and that the chorus is about how we'll all end up on life support at some point. The songwriters behind The Struts' "Could Have Been Me" got a co-writing credit because the melodies were so close. It builds slowly and is one of the heaviest songs on the record."Youngblood"
The shortest song on the album at 2:32, and a clap-along love song for Armstrong's wife, Adrienne. There's a line where she shuts him down by telling him she's from Oakland. It's simple and fun."Too Dumb to Die"
It opens with a distant, rattling riff before the first verse. The lyrics are self-deprecating, snarky one-liners about a lifetime of mistakes. It's not the strongest song here and some reviewers called it their least favorite, but it fits the mood."Troubled Times"
A catchy, simple tune with a bassy rattle underneath it, about an America on the edge, with racial unrest and economic inequality. Armstrong said he wished "we live in troubled times" was just a cliché, but it isn't. The cheerful tune against pessimistic lyrics is the same trick as "Say Goodbye.""Forever Now"
Almost seven minutes long and split into three parts: "I'm Freaking Out," "A Better Way to Die," and a reprise of "Somewhere Now." It's a mini-epic in the style of the multi-part songs on American Idiot. Armstrong sounds like he's confessing his doubts and putting things off, and the last part loops back to the opening track of the album."Ordinary World"
A quiet ballad to close. Armstrong wrote it for the movie Ordinary World, directed by Lee Kirk, where he plays a failed rocker turned family man, and he liked it enough to put it on the album too. A duet version with Miranda Lambert came out on the 2017 compilation God's Favorite Band.
Final Thoughts:
Revolution Radio got generally positive reviews, with a 72 on Metacritic. Kerrang! named it their album of 2016 and Rolling Stone had it at number 14 on their best of the year list. Ten years later it works best as the album where Green Day stopped chasing American Idiot and wrote about where they actually were, older, still angry and trying to keep going.