Green Day Nail Down “21st Century Breakdown” Release Date: May 15th
Green Day‘s 21st Century Breakdown — the band’s eighth studio record and first since 2004’s Grammy-winning American Idiot — has a firm release date: May 15th. While Tuesday is the traditional release day for albums in the States, the band is following the lead of labelmates Metallica and dropping its album worldwide on a Friday. First single “Know Your Enemy” will hit digital retailers in April, and the track’s video will debut on MTV and VH1 on April 24th. “American Idiot marked a really high bar for us,” Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong tells Rolling Stone for our Spring Album Preview. “It’s easy to go, ‘OK, we can just write a collection of songs.’ But there was something about trying to keep going for it.”
As Rock Daily reported in our first listen to Breakdown, the 16-track album is broken into three acts — Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints, and Horseshoes and Handgrenades — and ranges from garage rock to Queen-style grandeur. In our Spring Preview, Armstrong reveals the band plans to perform the whole album, all three exhausting acts, on a summer world tour.
Since the trek won’t launch until July, feast your eyes on a career-spanning gallery of Green Day photos here: Green Day’s Build Up to the “Breakdown”: A Look Back at the Punk Trio’s Career.
Plus, get the lowdown on 45 more of the season’s most anticipated albums in our Spring Music Preview: Studio reports, photos and music from Neil Young, Black Eyed Peas, Wilco and more.
Related Stories:
• First Listen: Green Day Revive Dramatic Political Punk on 21st Century Breakdown
• Billie Joe Armstrong on Bush, Britney and the Future of Punk