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The Trilogy is massively underrated


dudley dawson

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I still listen to the entire opus about once every other week or so. The whole project is a 4.5/5 for me and I feel is their best work since Warning (yes, better than AI). Who's with me on this??

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I couldn't agree less, but I'd be very interested to hear your reasons for thinking it's better than American Idiot.

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I wouldn't say it's their best effort since Warning, but I agree for the most part, it's definitely underrated. I only really have a problem with 2 songs out of all 37. The Trilogy makes up my 3 least favorite Green Day albums, but I still love them. I don't think it deserves nearly as much hate as it gets.

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No. The trilogy sounds so flat. The lyrics are rambling nonsense and there was clearly no quality control. Even if it was 1 album, there are not enough good songs to fill an album.

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I don't agree with it being their best work since Warning. Personally 21st Century Breakdown is my favorite Green Day album but the Trilogy is amazing I love each of the three albums. I really don't understand why it gets so much hate. One of my favorite things about the Trilogy is Tre's drum sound. The lyrics aren't as deep as American Idiot or 21st Century Breakdown but they don't need to be, they weren't those type of albums. And I may be the minority in this opinion but I actually enjoy Billie's guitar tone on these albums.

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I couldn't agree less, but I'd be very interested to hear your reasons for thinking it's better than American Idiot.

Song for song, I just think it is a stronger effort. Carpe Diem, Sweet 16, Rusty James, Lazy Bones, Baby Eyes, Missing You, 8th Ave Serenade, X Kid, Sex Drugs & Violence, Walk Away, 99 Revolutions, Fell For You, Angel Blue...these are some of the best songs Green Day has ever made.

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Personally 21st Century Breakdown is my favorite Green Day album

Hello, new best friend :lol:

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I'm tempted to type out a five-paragraph rant as to why this is totally wrong, but I'll just stand back and let zackjones_13 and Ceadog take it. :P

Though I will say that if you think "Sex, Drugs & Violence", "Baby Eyes" and "Carpe Diem" are among their best songs, you *really* need to give Nimrod. and Insomniac a relisten. And AI. And 21CB. And Warning. And Dookie. And Kerplunk.

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Well, I guess opinions are like arseholes, but I do need to weigh in here.

Song for song I guess it all depends what you're into. Obviously the band took a pretty big change of direction after Warning, so if you're not into the kind of sound that American Idiot and Breakdown have then that is what it is. That said, there's barely anything on the Trilogy that's better than anything from Nimrod or Warning, so if you're into that kind of thing then why not listen to those albums instead? Personally I rank Nuclear Family and Stay The Night up there with the best stuff they've ever done, and Tre is one of my favourite albums overall. But with that in mind, the quality control is absolutely dismal. I'm not even going to get into Dos, I think it's fucking awful, but if you like that sound then fair enough.

But the crux of the matter is that the production is a massive letdown - just listen to the Dookiefied versions for proof of that. Even production aside though, the arrangements are weak and lazy. It's just so flat, there's no dynamic interest whatsoever in most of the songs - even when they were making very simple music like on Dookie, there were extra layers of guitars coming in and out, and the backing vocals were fantastic. That's a big issue, as one of the best things about Green Day has always been Billie and Mike's harmonies. I honestly rate them as highly as Fleetwood Mac in that respect, and Billie knows they're great too, so I have less than no idea why he recorded most of the backing vocals himself for the Trilogy. It says a lot that the best chorus on the album is Stay The Night, and that's dominated by Mike's backing vocals. As for the melodies, well... they're just plain weird in places. Brutal Love's melody towards the end is fantastic, it's unexpected and shows off Billie's vocal range really well, much like Before The Lobotomy, which is one of his best vocal performances in my opinion. But when it comes to a lot of the Trilogy he sounds weak and bored.

The lyrics are utter drivel for the most part, too. They don't even touch American Idiot on any level. Fuck, they're nothing next to Insomniac. Billie is a genius lyricist, no question, but he needs to craft them as opposed to singing the first thing that comes to mind. That's Tre Cool's job.

Ultimately, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown were much bigger projects and more focused. Breakdown is a bit long and rambling, but in general the concept is there, whereas the Trilogy is a complete clusterfuck. With American Idiot and Breakdown the arrangements are deep and relatively complex, the song structures are innovative, the lyrics convey political propaganda through the metaphor of personal relationships, and the production is fucking kickass. The only thing the Trilogy has that those two albums don't is impressive bass playing from Mike. I fail to see how songs like JOS, Holiday, BOBD, WMUWSE, Letterbomb, Homecoming, Whatsername, 21st Century Breakdown or Restless Heart Syndrome are in any way inferior to Rusty fucking James. Those songs at the very least wipe the floor with anything on the Trilogy in terms of lyrics, production, melody, structure and arrangement.

And the Trilogy has that fucking tambourine.

giphy.gif

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Well I agree... the trilogy (for me, it's just an opinion) is the best thing Green Day has made since Warning. It's really sad that these 3 albums are so underrated, I can't deny there are some issues on them but they're really cool. The trilogy is a kind of "less is more" project, you know? a sort of "low profile project".

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Fun fact about 21stCB: the guitar track has at the most 7 guitars going at once whereas the trilogy has 3 at the most

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I don't agree, but you are entitled to your opinion. Different opinions are what makes people interesting! And honestly, there's no such thing as underrated and overrated, because everyone has their own opinion and people like different things.

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Fun fact about 21stCB: the guitar track has at the most 7 guitars going at once whereas the trilogy has 3 at the most

I thought it was something like that, yeah. Hell, the best thing about Know Your Enemy (which I generally hate) is how the doubled guitars come in and drop back out. For that album even the weak songs were arranged well.

Then there's Holiday with the goddamn ninja acoustic guitar. Love it.

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I thought it was something like that, yeah. Hell, the best thing about Know Your Enemy (which I generally hate) is how the doubled guitars come in and drop back out. For that album even the weak songs were arranged well.

Then there's Holiday with the goddamn ninja acoustic guitar. Love it.

Yeah on 21stCB there are 4 rhythm guitars, 2 left, 2 right, Acoustic guitar throughout most of the album the thicken the sound and 2 lead guitars 1 left, 1 right. All we get on the trilogy is 1 left, 1 right with the cleanest tone known to existence and a lead in the middle.

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Yeah on 21stCB there are 4 rhythm guitars, 2 left, 2 right, Acoustic guitar throughout most of the album the thicken the sound and 2 lead guitars 1 left, 1 right. All we get on the trilogy is 1 left, 1 right with the cleanest tone known to existence and a lead in the middle.

Clearly Rob Cavallo is out to ruin the band since they ditched him for Breakdown :P

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Clearly Rob Cavallo is out to ruin the band since they ditched him for Breakdown :P

He was Breaking Down Breakdown

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Clearly Rob Cavallo is out to ruin the band since they ditched him for Breakdown :P

But they ditched him for Warning, too, and the result of that was that he made them AI. :P

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But they ditched him for Warning, too, and the result of that was that he made them AI. :P

Maybe he felt sorry for them at that point.

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But they ditched him for Warning, too, and the result of that was that he made them AI. :P

He was the executive producer of Warning, so they didn't completely ditch him for it. 21CB, on the other hand, they did.

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I was incredibly excited for Carpe Diem after hearing the live leak (Tiki Bar?) and had it placed firmly in my top 10 all time GD songs. Alas, I was really disappointed by the studio version. It sounded like it had the soul sucked out of it by a

dementor :P

I did like many things about the trilogy, though - especially before joining GDC and being exposed to its flaws. Despite poor and redundant lyrics (I concede that this is no new occurrence: 86), songs like Nuclear Family, Stay the Night, let Yourself Go, Wow That's Loud, Angel Blue and Lazy Bones really felt like a pop punk revival for them. Reminiscent but distinctly different from the nineties. Dirty Rotten Bastards is my favorite song from the trilogy, and I love it as much as I did the first listen.

Some experimentation worked (KtDJ, Brutal Love), other times less so (Nightlife). I'd rather have I Run NY on Dos!

Now, the singles. Oh Love, oh my, don't get me started. What a terrible way to represent the trilogy as a lead single. This and The Forgotten as first exposure to casual fans gave the wrong impression and died on most radio stations. Kill the DJ is a fine song, but it doesn't work as a single when you need to censor every fifth word. Those following Uno simply suffered from the abandonment of promotion whatsoever.

As many have pointed out, Ceadog in particular, the trilogy appears to take heavy inspiration from the band's and others' music in multiple places. While this was ok with Brutal Love, I felt like I had vaguely heard the songs before, nothing new here.

Ultimately, it's a group of albums I have no problem enjoying, but I have trouble holding it in as high a regard as some of Green Day's other work.

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I'm tempted to type out a five-paragraph rant as to why this is totally wrong, but I'll just stand back and let zackjones_13 and Ceadog take it. :P

Though I will say that if you think "Sex, Drugs & Violence", "Baby Eyes" and "Carpe Diem" are among their best songs, you *really* need to give Nimrod. and Insomniac a relisten. And AI. And 21CB. And Warning. And Dookie. And Kerplunk.

I know all of their albums like the back of my hand. Those 3 songs are better than 90% of the OVERPRODUCED 21CB, and better than at least half of AI. You going to tell me Give Me Novocain is better than Lazy Bones??

Warning and Dookie are my favorite albums of theirs, btw.

Well, I guess opinions are like arseholes, but I do need to weigh in here.

Song for song I guess it all depends what you're into. Obviously the band took a pretty big change of direction after Warning, so if you're not into the kind of sound that American Idiot and Breakdown have then that is what it is. That said, there's barely anything on the Trilogy that's better than anything from Nimrod or Warning, so if you're into that kind of thing then why not listen to those albums instead? Personally I rank Nuclear Family and Stay The Night up there with the best stuff they've ever done, and Tre is one of my favourite albums overall. But with that in mind, the quality control is absolutely dismal. I'm not even going to get into Dos, I think it's fucking awful, but if you like that sound then fair enough.

But the crux of the matter is that the production is a massive letdown - just listen to the Dookiefied versions for proof of that. Even production aside though, the arrangements are weak and lazy. It's just so flat, there's no dynamic interest whatsoever in most of the songs - even when they were making very simple music like on Dookie, there were extra layers of guitars coming in and out, and the backing vocals were fantastic. That's a big issue, as one of the best things about Green Day has always been Billie and Mike's harmonies. I honestly rate them as highly as Fleetwood Mac in that respect, and Billie knows they're great too, so I have less than no idea why he recorded most of the backing vocals himself for the Trilogy. It says a lot that the best chorus on the album is Stay The Night, and that's dominated by Mike's backing vocals. As for the melodies, well... they're just plain weird in places. Brutal Love's melody towards the end is fantastic, it's unexpected and shows off Billie's vocal range really well, much like Before The Lobotomy, which is one of his best vocal performances in my opinion. But when it comes to a lot of the Trilogy he sounds weak and bored.

The lyrics are utter drivel for the most part, too. They don't even touch American Idiot on any level. Fuck, they're nothing next to Insomniac. Billie is a genius lyricist, no question, but he needs to craft them as opposed to singing the first thing that comes to mind. That's Tre Cool's job.

Ultimately, American Idiot and 21st Century Breakdown were much bigger projects and more focused. Breakdown is a bit long and rambling, but in general the concept is there, whereas the Trilogy is a complete clusterfuck. With American Idiot and Breakdown the arrangements are deep and relatively complex, the song structures are innovative, the lyrics convey political propaganda through the metaphor of personal relationships, and the production is fucking kickass. The only thing the Trilogy has that those two albums don't is impressive bass playing from Mike. I fail to see how songs like JOS, Holiday, BOBD, WMUWSE, Letterbomb, Homecoming, Whatsername, 21st Century Breakdown or Restless Heart Syndrome are in any way inferior to Rusty fucking James. Those songs at the very least wipe the floor with anything on the Trilogy in terms of lyrics, production, melody, structure and arrangement.

And the Trilogy has that fucking tambourine.

giphy.gif

I don't want to get too much into it (as these are just opinions after all), but I LOVE the simplified production on the trilogy. 21CB was overproduced beyond belief, you could barely discern one instrument from the other. The trilogy just sounds clean and pleasing to me.

Rusty James is just as good as any song you listed (better than most IMO), and CLEARLY better than WMUWSE (one of my all time least favorite GD songs)! Lol

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He was the executive producer of Warning, so they didn't completely ditch him for it. 21CB, on the other hand, they did.

Executive Producers dont really do shit lmao

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Executive Producers dont really do shit lmao

He still wasn't completely ditched, that was my point.

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