Review Summary: One down, two to go.
After Green Day's mess of an album known as 21st Century Breakdown, they decided to abandon the rock opera scene and go back to normal Green Day roots. They announced that they would be releasing a trilogy of albums in the fall. The first one, ¡Uno!, was stated by Green Day to be a power pop album. Does that work? Well, let's find out.
¡Uno! is half good and half bad. Let's start with the bad: Green Day does not know how to release singles. Two of the most horrible, blandest and repetitive tracks are released as singles, those being "Oh Love" and "Kill the DJ". "Oh Love" screams sellout song, being a repetitive piece of crap that basically repeats the same chord structure for every verse and every chorus. There is no variation until the bridge, and the lyrics are repetitive too. "Kill the DJ" has Green Day experimenting into dance-punk, which also screams sellout. At least the music isn't boring, but the lyrics are. The entire chorus consists of "someone kill the DJ, shoot the f**king DJ", and at the end, we get a part where Armstrong sings the line seven straight times. We get it already. Your singles are repetitive as hell.
As with the other bad, "Sweet 16" wastes away some of the album's stronger lyrics on a soft, bland track. It's boring, but not as repetitive as the singles. Another flop is "Troublemaker", a song about sex that sounds like a rejected Foxboro Hot Tub track. It's one of the album's weaker songs.
The best song on the album is easily "Let Yourself Go", which is the hardest punk song on the album and better than all the songs on 21st Century Breakdown. It does have its flaws, such as the repetitive chorus and bridge, but they're catchy enough to make up for it.
Another great song is the opener "Nuclear Family". It's a great start to the album, and kicks it off with lyrics about nuclear war. It may not be the hardest song on the album, but it's good enough to not be deemed sellout. "Angel Blue" is another fast punk song with lyrics about growing up that is easily relatable.
And that's basically it. All the other songs are average tracks that don't stand out, but they don't exactly do any bad either. Among those tracks are "Stay the Night", which is good, but too soft, "Carpe Diem", which is one of the harder songs on the album, with great lyrics in the chorus. "Fell For You" is your standard love song, "Loss of Control" is highly profane and talks about the people you hated in high school, "Rusty James" sounds like a great song, though stealing the riff from "Letterbomb", but it gets pissed away towards the highly repetitive end.
My final verdict? It's all average, with some standout tracks, and some horrible tracks. Get "Let Yourself Go", "Nuclear Family" and "Angel Blue", and don't bother with the rest of the album.
