21st Century Breakdown is the eighth studio album by the American rock band Green Day, released on May 15, 2009, through Reprise Records. Green Day commenced work on the record in January 2006 and forty-five songs were written by vocalist and guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong by October 2007, but the band members did not enter studio work until January 2008. 21st Century Breakdown is a concept album and rock opera, much like their previous album American Idiot. According to the band, the album is a rumination of "the era in which we live as we question and try to make sense of the selfish manipulation going on around us". The singles "Know Your Enemy" and "21 Guns" exemplify the themes of alienation and politically motivated anger present in the record. To handle the record, they turned to producer Butch Vig, best known for producing Nirvana's Nevermind. Critical response to 21st Century Breakdown was positive, though it was generally seen as inferior to American Idiot upon release. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Ce...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...)