A new Day dawns

The Grammys’ album of the year nominees are all class and elegance -- even hip-hop’s representative, Kanye West, is a thoughtful artist and upstanding citizen. So how did the scruffy punk-rockers of Green Day crash this party and lodge themselves alongside West, Usher, Ray Charles and Alicia Keys?

It’s no surprise that a rock album is one of the best-album finalists. The surprise is that it’s an album by a band that appeared to be sinking from sight three years ago. None of the finalists can trace a more unlikely path to the promised land than this Northern California trio.

For Green Day to buck the odds, it took a fortuitous combination of self-generated creative breakthrough and a series of career decisions dating to 2002. All the elements conspired to make “American Idiot” a comeback blockbuster and a potential Grammy landmark. If it wins tonight, Green Day will join the Beatles and U2 as the only rock bands to win the album of the year award.

The story’s great intangible is how Green Day -- singer-guitarist Billie Joe Armstrong, drummer Tre Cool and bassist Mike Dirnt -- managed to eclipse by a mile the artistic level of its earlier records. “American Idiot” is an hourlong concept album, packed with Who-like structures and flourishes and telling the story of a kid coping with the confusing social climate and political tumult of the contemporary U.S.

Tapping those unexpected creative reserves was crucial to capturing the attention of Grammy voters, who are conscious of preserving the credibility of the top awards.

“Not only is the record great musically, but it has some heft to it,” says David Fricke, a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine. “By taking the big leap that they did, writing this kind of very politically charged punk opera, they sort of reasserted themselves as someone to take notice of.”

Not words you might have expected to hear about Green Day. For most of its first decade, it was widely dismissed critically as a lightweight facsimile of the Clash, emulating the English punk pioneers’ sound and accent but carrying little of its passion and bite.

Commercially, though, Green Day took off after signing with Warner Bros.’ Reprise label in the early ‘90s. When “Dookie” came out in 1994, the trio almost single-handedly translated punk-rock from an underground niche into a bratty but kid-friendly entertainment that would grow into one of pop’s biggest genres in the hands of such Green Day heirs as Blink-182 and Good Charlotte.

“Dookie” included the hits “Welcome to Paradise” and “Basket Case” and sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. The band crossed over to a pop audience with the string-section ballad “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” from 1997’s “Nimrod.”

But things seemed to be winding down by the time of “Warning,” which came out in 2000 and hit a sales ceiling of 1 million.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say that Green Day was not relevant to MTV,” says Tom Calderone, executive vice president of music and talent programming at MTV and MTV2. “I think musically and culturally it just didn’t fit where we were at a couple of years ago. The audience didn’t gravitate toward it and say, ‘Wow, I’m glad the new Green Day’s there.’ ”

*

Downhill, then accelerating back up

ToM WHALLEY, chairman and chief executive of Warner Bros. Records, takes an even harder line.

“At the end of the last album, you started to feel a change for the band on the downside,” he says. “Selling a million records is still a good thing, but it felt like a little bit of a disappointment for the band, and you started to see a change in the audience, and you could see a change in MTV’s interest in the band and how relevant it was to a radio station. There’s always the change in music by generation, and you could just feel that change happening around Green Day.”

The groundwork for Green Day’s recovery actually began in 2002 when Whalley got a call from Blink-182’s people proposing a co-headlining tour. Though he expected Green Day to feel hesitant about sharing the top billing with one of its successors, Whalley thought it was just what the band needed.

“It was the perfect opportunity for Green Day to play in front of a whole new generation of kids,” he says. “It worked out great.... They did capture this whole new generation of kids that probably knew their music but really didn’t know the band. And around that tour we put out a greatest-hits package for the exact same reason.

“Those two things combined spread out the audience for them.... There are career decisions you have to make along the way that have nothing to do with releasing a record, but they’ll have an impact on the record if they’re the right decisions.”

When “American Idiot” came out last September, says Whalley, it just took off by itself. Radio played the title song and “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” MTV embraced the videos, and critics gave the band the best reviews of its career. So far, 2.3 million copies of the album have been sold in the U.S.

At least part of that momentum stems from the timing of the album’s release during the heated political atmosphere of the 2004 presidential campaign.

“Whenever there’s an election or a sea change or conservatism hovering over the country, this is when music really, truly becomes a powerful statement,” says MTV’s Calderone.

Adds Fricke, “Let’s face it, the times have a lot to do with it. I’m not sure a record like this would have really meant a whole lot to people during the Clinton administration....

“When you consider the times that we live in, the sort of things their audience have to contend with in terms of their future, the things that they’re addressing on that record ring a lot truer than anything you’re gonna get from Good Charlotte.”