First of all, I should state out front that I’m not a Green Day fan - to me, they’ve always been mall punk for poseurs. But even so, “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” seems egregious. It’s just such a horrible middle-of-the-road song with moronic lyrics; it might as well be Journey. Even though I don’t care for the band, nothing else I’ve heard by them has sounded quite so Wal*Mart, if you know what I mean. I read that American Idiot was allegedly a concept album (ugh), so I was wondering if maybe this song was a parody of some of the more bland radio fare of the time (seems like something Townsend might’ve done on “Sell Out”, or The Coolies did on “Doug”), or if it’s actually just a bad song on its own terms. Anybody know?
I wouldn’t say “parody”. American Idiotwas a concept album that was supposed to be a commentary of American life under Bush. Boulevard of Broken Dreams was one of the songs telling that story. Maybe it was musically supposed to parody the bland style of the day. I can’t say.
Apparently Noel Gallagher of Oasis accused Green Day of stealing the chord progressionfrom their song “Wonderwall.” But no, it’s not a parody.
And I think American Idiot is one of the best albums of the decade.
Using your criteria, it is simply a bad song on its own terms.
I happen to disagree - I agree with **SaharaTea **that AI is a great CD and I strongly disagree with your POV - one shared by a LOT of people, I know - that Green Day are “mall punk for poseurs.” But I am not about to try to change your mind and given your knowledge of music and your own tastes, I am sure you aren’t interested anyway ;). YMMV and all.
So yeah, let’s just go with a bad song on its own terms for now…
I would. It’s a parody of exactly the kind of banal “no one understands me” angst-mistaken-for-depth that Jimmy (and all teenagers everywhere) are inclined toward. It’s an irony bomb.
See, that’s what I thought after hearing it for the 100th time or so the other day. Because even though I’m not a fan, I don’t think Billy Joe’s stupid, or that Green Day needed to write something “commercial” to sell albums. That song just seemed to scream “lowest common denominator” to me, but if it’s a parody it’s a damned good job.
This is silly. A parody of bland songs… Musically, how could you even make that if you wanted. It would just be another bland song.
And the song is not even that bland. Heavy guitars at some points, plus it’s pretty good.
I don’t mean musically, so much as lyrically. But even musically, IMO, it’s sort of bombastically generic. Not necessarily bad, just… winkingly on the nose.
I love the notion that “Wonderwall” is the first song to use that chord sequence. Yet another reason for me to think of Oasis as absurd… 
Yeah! I know little about music, but don’t chord progressions, especially ones in inoffensive pop songs, build, y’know, progressively? Like when I played guitar: tonic, subdominant, dominant-seventh? How could they copyright THAT?
Not that it matters a wet fart, but even the title is stolen from a pop hit of 1933.
I know you can’t copyright a title, and I know 1933 is long enough ago there wasn’t even real music yet, but still…
Boulevard of Broken dreams is a common reference to Sunset Blvd.
It could also be a reference to this painting, which was a parody of Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. Which in turn may be the inspiration for the song “Nighthawks at the Diner” by Tom Waits. We’re only three more degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon.
Hey, a possible song parody with the title taken from a painting which is a parody of another painting. Deep, man.
BTW, I think the song, and the album, are both great.
Wow, that’s nuts. That progression is as common as dirt. I wonder if Oasis has ever heard “Mad World” or “Man in the Box.” Those songs both predate “Wonderwall” and use the same progression in the same key.
I understand why people feel that way, but their sound pretty much reflects the Berkeley scene that they came out of. Berkeley punk always had that sort of suburban slacker thing going. Obviously they’re a little more polished, what with the expensive equipment and production they’ve had access to as a major label band.
Nah. It doesn’t strike me as particularly out of character for Green Day musically and definitely not out of character lyrically for the album, which was about life under Bush. I think ‘mall punk’ is as apt a description of their flavor of pop punk as anything but they don’t strike me as poseurs. The music is simple but enjoyable enough on it’s own terms, with a slacker ethos, but even slackers occasionally care about… stuff. 
You know, I generally hate that “mall punk” sound with a passion, but I’ve always had nothing but respect for Green Day–they’re the only band of that style I enjoy listening to. Between Dookie and American Idiot, they’ve crafted perhaps the finest albums of that genre. Great pop songwriting on both albums that I don’t think should be dismissed out of hand for a distaste for the sound.
As for the song in the OP, I never thought of it as a parody. There’s nothing in the lyrics of the song itself or continuity with the lyrical themes of American Idiot to make me think it’s meant with any irony. I think it’s perfectly solid as it is. Not my favorite of theirs, but a solid pop song.
I think for it to be recognizably a parody, there ought to be some telltale sign, some wink to those the parody is intended to appeal to; I don’t see anything like that in the song, and it’s also not enough of a break in style and content to seem purposeful.
Sometimes, I wonder if maybe the Gallagher brothers are a parody…
Funny to see “Boulevard” discussed as a parody, since one of my favorite comedy parody songs of recent years is Spaff’s I Blog Alone (Link to SOUND- YouTube).
Link is a random YouTuber lipsyncing, not the performing artist, Robert Lund.
I like Green Day, but I do find some of their songs to be waaay more derivative than I would consider to be kosher. There’s another song on that album (Holiday?) sounds almost exactly like Iggy’s The Passenger.
They do it on purpose, sometimes, I think. Remember the video for Basket Case? At the very end, they strike a pose and it looks exactly like the picture on the cover of the Buzzcocks’ Singles Going Steady. An homage to one of the bands they probably ought to be giving a cut of their royalties, along with the Clash and The Jam.
Not only is there no ‘wink’ within the song, there was no ‘wink’ from the band themselves.
Don’t you think that if they were going to produce a parody of popular songs they would attempt to make it clear that this song was a statement AGAINST the very songs it sounded like?