Last night I took my first listen to a demo track of “21st Century Breakdown”, the forthcoming first single from the new Green Day album of the same name. And goddamn, I think I’m excited to hear the rest.

At times in my life, I’ve been a pretty huge Green Day fan. A superfan you might say. Those days are passed but they’ve left quite a soft spot in my heart for anything that they do. However, when I saw the cover art for the new album, my heart sank. Looking like a clichéd banksy rip off, I nearly gave up hope for the new album. Then I read comments from Spin magazine where they described the guitars on one song as “Linkin Park style” and I got sick to my stomach. But I listened anyway because there’s still nothing like new music from your favorite band from middle school. I was more than a little bit surprised.

I didn’t really like American Idiot. I thought they were trying to hard to be an arena band. This time around, I think they figured it out. “21st Century Breakdown” starts with a Springsteen-esque piano riff. Yeah…Springsteen. I sat up straight. The song held my attention all the way through. Featuring patently Green Day moments coupled with the epic grandeur of The Who (Keith Moon is Tre Cool’s idol as a drummer), “21st” defies critical and popular expectations.

One of the most surprising elements in the song are the lyrics. While there are a fair amount of generic anti-war and anti-America sentiments which, at this point, seem like filler coming from Billie Joe, there are in fact some gems hidden in the rock. My favorite is the stanza

I am an agent, a worker, a pawn.
My debt to the status quo:
The scars on my hands are a means to an end,
It’s all that I have to show.

Woah! A rock star without an ego?! Somebody tell Bono before he embarrasses himself again! That’s what you get when you put bay area punks in Madison square garden. I think he’s almost apologizing for making absurd amounts of money playing guitar every night.

Will it be another classic to add to the Green Day catalog? I hope so but who knows. It’s off to a better start than American Idiot!