Album Rating: 3.0

prob helps that it has a giant ass tracklist where the streaming version of ai is dumb and condenses the album to being 9 tracks + bonuses

Album Rating: 3.5

^ Ugh I hate how AI is condensed down like that, annoys me every time I see it.

Album Rating: 4.5

SAME

Album Rating: 4.0

I've now realized the idea of "last third keeps the album down" isn't a great argument for my 3.5. This is over an hour long. The fact that even half the album is as good as it is should make it an auto-4. This ties into how I won't rate a 15 min EP over 4.5 even if it's god tier, it just isn't really fair.



Also I just realized this is not only like an AI 2: Electric Boogalo but also for many of the songs, a Warning successor, but with a lot more reverb. The Static Age could easily have been on Warning, with no changes to fit in over than reverb lol.

pretty sure he ripped off like 3 choruses on this from warning so yeah that checks out

Album Rating: 3.0

yea as someone who heard this before warning i was v confused when i jammed warning for the first time and heard way too many of the same vocal lines as were on here lol

Album Rating: 4.0

This pretty much took like over ten years to fully grow on me. It just took time to get over not quite liking it as much as I did AI - a feeling I had for years since this came out in '09 - but once I realized AI is crack in music form and basically the greatest rock album of the 21st century, it became easier to get over my feelings about 21st CB and see it for what it was, which is a masterpiece at its core with a bit too much fat and a little warm on production.



Change some of weaker parts at the end of the album, improve the song order (H&H actually sounds far better in a playlist where the song order does it justice rather than having it weirdly placed in the middle of lower energy songs as in 21st CB), remove the reverb filter on Billie's voice (for most of the album) and give the mix the same edge as AI or Nimrod, and this is an easy 4.5 or 5.0.

Album Rating: 3.0

literally every lyric needs a rewrite too lmfao



im the opposite. i jammed this for the first time as a 12 year old with no standards for anything (and also thought ai was crack in musical form then) so i loved it, but good lord is every bad thing people have always said about it true lmao. still got some jams tho

Album Rating: 4.0

#1. Interview: https://youtu.be/L3Fv1dOkJ88?si=Pal8aMPanfh1Svpw&t=1030

#2. Milano, Italy 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6vN2X_ECu4

#3. Welcome to Paradise at 2024 Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve: https://youtu.be/BcZVie5ophY?si=uILOXttZ5uNbMAZW&t=229



I finally cracked the code.



After watching the Milano, Italy 2017 show and hearing Billie sound like he did on AI, it had me questioning the whole "it's just his voice aging" thing as to why his signature heavy accent started tapering with 21st CB.



For the last few weeks I had been debating this, again due to my surprise by the Milano 2017 show, until I saw link #1 where Billie literally outright says "the fake English accent I've been doing for the past fifteen years." The interview appears to be from 2009, so fifteen years back would be 1994 for Dookie. Now, I had actually suspected this for his singing accent in AI, but not as much for the albums beforehand. I sort of thought he naturally had a low and meaty voice and just added a bit of British sparkle for AI. So it strikes me that he's admitting he had been using a British accent - or his take on it - basically from the beginning. Now everything makes sense. I could only guess that he used it because he likes the British Punk scene and wanted to fit in with those bands more, or because it just sounds cooler or more confident.

Album Rating: 4.0

So his meatier/British accent has slowly faded in place of his natural accent with each album, again starting with 21st CB. For the longest time I thought that was natural voice aging, but while his voice has in fact aged, he can still do the same accent(s) with the same level of bravado - just as important - even today as seen in link #3 with the provided timestamp during Welcome to Paradise. But what exactly would explain him shifting? Has he said in an interview if it's because he wants to be truer to himself, or because it's easier to use his natural voice? Or is it a combination of both wanting to distance himself from it with aging also having an effect?



Either way, it makes sense that he had been planning to slowly taper from it in stages as to not make the transition too jarring for fans. You could hear a lot more of his natural singing voice on 21st CB, but he still sounded adjacent to how he did on AI. Then on the trilogy he really dropped the accent to a larger degree, regained it a tiny bit for Rev Radio, then dropped it almost completely for FOA and now Saviors.



It kind of makes me wonder how much my opinion of the newer albums would change if he used his "British" or AI accent to the same extent. Would the songs sound more like OG Green Day? Does the accent change have an effect kind of like how you view British and American characters differently in movies?

Album Rating: 3.0

i saw him recently say that he played up the lower more macho side of his voice since he wanted to come across more masculine but around the time of this album he stopped caring and dropped all of that



do not think peoples takes on these albums would change because that is not a change in the songwriting and boy does this need help in that regard lmfao

Album Rating: 4.0

There are moments like the verses in christians inferno where it's pretty much the same as AI or H&H where it's like in between AI and natural. I actually like the meatier accent more but with that he also did more timbre things that made his voice more interesting whereas now he's more straightforward and it's more about the lyrics than it is about his voice manipulation. Though he is doing those nutty screams in Saviors which is interesting.



Honestly I think I actually would like the albums slightly more. I'm not gonna pretend it doesn't sound different or doesn't change the emotions of the music. But at the same time, his vocal and writing style have changed to the point where it probably wouldn't fit as well if he went full Brit voice for Trilogy or Saviors. But I do think something more like a Nimrod accent would sound fine for Saviors.

Album Rating: 3.0

he sounds ridiculously good on saviors. read a bobby sox review long before the album dropped that compared him on the hook to chester which until i first heard it i assumed was just dumb reviewer speak that didnt actually mean anything. the fact that i do hear it now that i have the record is wild to me lol



idk if the problem is i dont like how he sounds on christians infero, or if i just viscerally cant stand that song lmao. one of their worst choruses ever. probably the lowlight here for me

Album Rating: 3.5

As someone who has lived most of his life in Britain, Billie Joe's singing voice does not sound British at all

Album Rating: 4.0

His pre-21st CB singing accents did sound closer to a British one than his natural singing voice, but he probably said that for expediency as it's sort of his own unique thing with some British influence. He still pronounced the rhotic R like American accents but would do some Os like British. Adding lower frequencies to vowels also sounds more like certain English punk singers.