The disparity in cultural reverence between Beastie Boys and Green Day.
I was 16 when American Idiot came out. Before then, I had grown up a casual, though not ardent fan of Green Day. I got into them at age 10 thanks to the Godzilla soundtrack which had a remix of ‘Brain Stew,’ which changed nothing about the song besides inexplicably inserting Godzilla roars in the silent beats in between the guitar ‘dunuhs.’
They had modest hits on the rock stations, such as Dookie’s ‘Basket Case’ and were just popular enough to be well-known while still retaining their street cred. If you were an adolescent in the ’90s, you probably loved them, liked them or had never heard of them except for their biggest hit ‘Good Riddance,’ which received plenty of air time while never becoming a smash.
American Idiot changed all that. As an indoctrinated teenager living in Utah during the Bush years, I didn’t care for their anti-American sentiment, but I enjoyed the singles from it. They were catchy and fun. Then they became inescapable. No matter where you went or what you watched, ‘American Idiot,’ ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends’ and to a lesser extent ‘Holiday’ were waiting for you. Thes songs clogged up the airwaves of MTV, top 40 radio, movies, commercials and television shows.
By this point, all the punk and alt kids disavowed Green Day. They were now popular and being popular meant they were sellouts. The rest of us grew weary of having these once-enjoyable songs played ad infinitum everywhere all the fucking time. Overexposure breeds resentment. Just ask another 2004 victim of overexposure, Jude Law.
In a lot of ways, it felt like American Idiot was Green Day’s final album. They reemerged five years later in 2009 with a new release, but by then it felt like a non-event. They had been wise to hold off on an immediate followup to the meteoric ‘American Idiot,’ but they probably waited a little too long. Everyone had moved on with their lives and many only retained the residue of their aversion to the year of Green Day.
Nowadays it seems like Green Day isn’t considered ‘bad’ in retrospect, but certainly in several tiers lower than they would have been if they were primarily remembered for ‘Nimrod,’ ‘Warning,’ ‘Insomniac’ and ‘Dookie.’ In the ’90s, they were generally well-respected among fans and critics. The negative opinion of them appears to stem from the everyone’s feelings on ‘American Idiot.’
Compare this with the legacy of the Beastie Boys:
Whereas Green Day had release seven albums before achieving global superstardom, the Beastie Boys’ very first record ‘License to Ill’ rocketed them onto the scene. They were young, rebellious kids purportedly lampooning the culture of fratty douchebags with ‘Fight for Your Right to Party’ before, by their own admission, becoming fratty douchebags themselves. Victims of their own success.
Like American Idiot, the songs of License to Ill ruled the cultural landscape. They were inescapable. Thematically, ‘License’ was the opposite of ‘Idiot’ and shared many of themes of Green Day’s earlier albums: horniness, partying and hating your parents. What it shared most strongly with ‘Idiot’ was the overexposure.
Like the Beastie Boys, Green Day started out by exploring more juvenile subjects and matured throughout the 1990s, eventually exploring more substantial themes on later albums.
Conversely, the Beastie Boys got their overexposure out of the way with their very first album, though they were in danger of becoming one hit wonders. A ‘kid act’ that teenagers quickly forgot about. Their followup, ‘Paul’s Boutique’ was a commercial disaster and certainly did nothing to help dispel notions that they were nothing more than a fluke, but I think it’s a release that was vital to their long-term success.
‘Paul’s Boutique’ was well-received critically and has since been reevaluated as one of their finest albums, but it did something else for them. It bought them back some street cred. After all, there’s nothing that strengthens a band’s rep like an overlooked and underrated masterpiece.
This paved the way for the critically and commercially successful ‘Check Your Head.’ They had perfected their sound. Gone was the fratty ‘Fight For Your Right’ and replaced by the raw urgency of ‘So What’Cha Want’ and ‘Pass The Mic.’
The Beastie Boys had more hits like ‘Sabotage’ and ‘Intergalactic’ throughout the ’90s, maturing in the spotlight as they began to explore the meaning of life, injustice and sexism. They evolved from goofy clowns to reflective musicians discussing important issues.
While I think Beastie Boys are superior to Green Day, I find it fascinating how differently each band is remembered from a cultural perspective. I don’t think it has to do with a significant disparity in the quality of their sound. I think it’s at least partially has to do with the fact that everyone’s lasting impression of Green Day is being annoyed by the ubiquitousness of ‘American Idiot.’
‘License to Ill’ is an album unlikely to be released by a band in their early 30s for obvious reasons, but if an album of its popularity had been released as late into the Beastie Boys’ career as ‘American Idiot’ was, there’s a possibility that Beastie Boys’ legacy would not be so well-regarded as it is.