Ok, so I just finished listening to the new All Time Low CD, Nothing Personal, and I actually enjoyed it for the most part, which is weird because I never really like CDs the first time I hear them. Maybe it was because I just finished listening to 21st Century Breakdown and I was still on the wave of happiness from it, who knows. Anyways, this is kinda my thoughts on both of the CDs since I just listened to both of them (yeah I really finished listening at 1:40 in the am).
I think there's a reason why it took me a long time to comment on the new Green Day and a short time to comment on the new All Time Low because they are so different structurally. 21st Century Breakdown was like an acquired taste, if you will. It took a few listens for it to sink in (the total times I've listened to it is now nine). Another reason why it took me so long to comment on it is because I didn't listen to it right away. It took me weeks to listen to it for the first time. One reason is because I wanted to take my time with it and listen to it all the way through because it's supposed to be like a story and I wanted to sit down and listen to it all the way through in order without stopping and with no interruptions and I had too much going on at that time to do this. To be completely honest there was another reason. I wanted to hold on to the American Idiot era because it was so great and I was a little scared to jump into it even though all the critics thought it was great, even better than American Idiot (however, I don't always believe them, they hated Warning and that was one of my favorites). So now that I've had the time to listen to it all the way through nine times, listen to the lyrics, and let them settle in, I feel like I can talk about it better. It really took me a while to fully embrace it, but now I love it and I just want to keep listening, but I limit myself so I don't listen to it over and over all day.
On the other hand, my feelings toward Nothing Personal were quite the opposite. I was really excited to buy it and hear it. Not that I wasn't excited to buy a new piece of Green Day history, but 21st Century Breakdown meant the death of an era that I loved so much, but I have now realized that the new era will hopefully be as good as the last. I was just scared for them because I really didn't want them to fail, not that I thought that they would, I knew they would pull it off, I just had that little nagging feeling in the back of my mind saying how could anything get better than American Idiot, or even close to that level. Well, it took them some time, but they definitely got there, and I'm so happy for them. Anyways, back to Nothing Personal. The first time I listened to it I liked most of the songs. While 21st Century Breakdown has characters and a plot line and a theme, Nothing Personal, to me, is just a collection of new songs, like most CDs out there, which is not a bad thing (not that CDs are that simplistic, but I hope you get what I mean). With 21st Century Breakdown, since it has a story, it takes much longer to digest and to really get what they are trying to convey. With CDs that are like stories, all of the songs have the potential to have at least a double meaning, if not multiple meanings beyond that. Again, Nothing Personal is the opposite of that. Songs could have a double meaning, but not necessarily. This is definitely not to say that the songs are transparent, some songs you really have to dig deep to understand what they are really saying. So in that sense there is kinda a double meaning; what you see/hear on the surface, and what it all really means that we, as the audience may never know. So if you look at it that way, CDs with a storyline can definitely have more that two meanings per song: what you see/hear on the surface, the song's meaning to the storyline, and maybe even the songwriters feelings toward someone or something in their life that the audience doesn't know about. All of that just to say that Nothing Personal, as a whole is just less complex to the ears and brain than 21st Century Breakdown. I'm sure writing music, whether there's a storyline or not, is hard, so I'm not trying to insult either bands' songwriting skills, I'm just saying that with 21st Century Breakdown there is more for the brain to digest.
I love the sounds of both CDs. With 21st Century Breakdown, I hear a lot of influences from older Green Day CDs. I even made a list of new songs that match old songs. Not to say that the songs are exactly the same, sometimes they just have the same beat, or one song just reminds me of another. It's a great CD. A lot of the songs either start out slow or soft and get faster and/or louder and some just keep building tension, and there are a lot of highs and lows, the music never stays in one place. There are so many great songs, it's hard to choose one favorite, but right now a few of my favorites are The Static Age, Peacemaker, Last of the American Girls, Viva La Gloria, wow they are all so great. I think I like acts 2 and 3 the best, I don't know why, maybe it's just because the mood as it progresses just keeps getting better and better. One last thing, I really love how it all comes together like a musical, the two songs at the beginning recur again (well they start off the same but go in different directions), just like a musical, it starts with the introduction song and it goes full circle and recaps the introduction at the end. Five stars for 21st Century Breakdown. You can really see how much the band has grown musically and Billie Joe's vocal range, as well as the rest of the band's musical and song writing abilities.
I like that Nothing Personal has a range of different sounds. It's not completely something new for music, but it's new for All Time Low. They change it up a lot more with this CD, but at the same time, the songs had a familiar feeling, I don't know how to describe it, like I could just sing the words even though this was the first time I heard the CD. Of course I've been listening to Weightless and Dammned If I Do Ya (Damned If I Don't) since All Time Low leaked them on their own, but it was nice to hear the songs as part of the rest of the CD. I really did love all the new ATL sounds up until Walls, and my feelings continued with Too Much. In my opinion those songs could have been left out. It sounded like they were hip hop songs for most of the song, they did break it up with a rockish sound, but I didn't really like those sounds too much. The rest of the songs were really good in my opinion. I also really like Therapy, it really showed Alex's vocal ability, which could also be seen on the rest of the CD. Overall I give it four stars. I think they have grown, at least a little, musically, but for the future, I'd love for them to really blow me away, like what Green Day did to me, which I started to see a little bit. Maybe I'm asking too much, but maybe it will happen with a little more experience and time.
Oh yeah, by the way (whoa, I haven't actually typed out those words in a long time, usually it's just BTW), I thought it was interesting that there was a song on both CDs that used some form of the word elated (for 21st Century Breakdown it was Restless Heart Syndrome and the word was elated, for Nothing Personal it was A Party Song (The Walk Of Shame) and the word was elation). I had no idea what that word means, so I looked it up. This is what I got from Dictionary.com:
e⋅late [i-leyt] e⋅lat⋅ed, e⋅lat⋅ing, adjective
–verb (used with object)
1. to make very happy or proud: news to elate the hearer.
Which is funny because that's how I feel about both CDs. I'm so glad to have new songs to hear and learn so I can sing them when I see them live.
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