Green Day Set Next "Breakdown" Video, More "Idiot" Performances

Green Day announced yesterday on their official Website that the next single off 21st Century Breakdown will be the album's title track. For the music video, the band — who you can see next week performing on the MTV Video Music Awards — will once again team with director Marc Webb, who previously helmed the bullet-ridden "21 Guns" clip. The single is expected within the next month.

In other Green Day news, the response for the band's American Idiot musical at California's Berkley Rep has been so great that the show has already been extended before its debut performance tonight. American Idiot was originally supposed to run through October 11th, but record box office sales and an "unprecedented demand for seats" led producers to extend the run through November 1st. The stage show borrows its narrative from Green Day's Grammy-winning 2004 masterpiece American Idiot and spice things up with a handful of songs from 21st Century Breakdown.

As Rolling Stone previously reported, the musical is directed by Tony Award winner Michael Mayer of Spring Awakening fame. It's expected that the American Idol musical will eventually jump coasts to Broadway, but no plans have been announced yet. The Berkeley Rep performances will star John Gallagher Jr., Matt Caplan, Michael Esper and Rebecca Naomi Jones. Unfamiliar with these names? Rolling Stone has your primer on the American Idiot musical cast. To find out more about who will help bring "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Wake Me Up When September Ends" from the CD to the stage, check out our who's who:
• Green Day's "American Idiot" Musical: Meet the Rocker Cast

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• The Birth of Green Day's "American Idiot" Musical

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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