Green Day's New Album "21st Century Breakdown" Due in May

Last night, Green Day presented the Album of the Year award to Plant & Krauss at the 51st Annual Grammy ceremony. This time next year, the punk trio's role might be reversed — today word arrived that the Cali band's forthcoming album, called 21st Century Breakdown according to their official Website, would be released in May. The band made no mention of the new disc before presenting the award.

Warner Music confirmed the title and is now accepting pre-orders for the album at the early-bird price of $11.99. (Read our preview of album here: First Listen — 21st Century Breakdown). According to AP magazine, the new LP will feature 16 songs spread across three Acts: Heroes and Cons, Charlatans and Saints and Horseshoes and Handgrenades. Among the reported song titles include the title track, "Viva La Gloria," "Know Your Enemy" and "March of the Dogs." Garbage's Shirley Manson and then a series of YouTube videos revealed that Butch Vig (Nirvana's Nevermind, Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream) would be producing. Rolling Stone will have a host of details on Billie Joe and Co.'s latest next week — we joined the band in their San Francisco studio for a sneak peak at 21st Century Breakdown, and the full report will run in the next issue.

The May album is the band's first since 2004's acclaimed American Idiot. That LP went on to win Best Rock Album at the 2005 Grammys, while "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" won Record of the Year at the 2006 event.  In the time since American Idiot's release, Green Day released the album Stop Drop and Roll!!! as their secret side project, the Foxboro Hot Tubs.

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Song Stories

“Truly Madly Deeply”

Savage Garden | 1998

"Truly Madly Deeply" is one of the earliest songs written by this Australian duo, but if not for a clever rewrite, Savage Garden's biggest worldwide hit may never have seen the light of day. "'Truly Madly Deeply' was originally a slightly different song that Daniel Jones and I had written and recorded on our first-ever demo cassette that we shopped to labels back in 1994," Darren Hayes recalled. "The verses were exactly the same, but I'm rather embarrassed to admit the chorus did not exist." The Australian duo tweaked the song, and it set a record by staying on the Billboard singles chart for 123 weeks.

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