Spencer Griffin's New Music Mondays

 Green Day and blink-182 are BOTH back?! Say WHAT?! Not every day this happens (and I barely even like blink to begin with, but their latest song changes my opinion of them)!! The '90s are back, baby! Four other songs worth listening to here, too. Enjoy! "American Dream is Killing Me" by Green Day:  Green Day became the Clash of latter-day rock music with the release of American Idiot  in 2004, which expanded the formerly bratty punk-pop-rockers both lyrically and musically. "American Dream is Killing Me," the latest from the first '90s punk-pop group to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, continues where American Idiot left off. In addition to having a similar title to that album, the song also has similar themes with its dissatisfaction of the American government and politics. The song has a similar riff and rhythm to their '04 song, "Holiday" (which itself seemed to borrow heavily from The Clash's "London Calling,"...

 here they are: "Mother Nature" by MGMT:  I wasn't so big on MGMT when they debuted, as they were mainly an electro-pop band back then. However, they have since proven themselves to be just as fluent in psychedelic pop and even folk-rock, of which their latest song, "Mother Nature," seems to opt for the latter sound (though it briefly dips into psych-pop towards the middle). It's probably the calmest I've heard so far from their catalog, and probably the deepest as well, with lyrics about wanting to connect more to nature than to manmade civilization.  "Now and Then" by The Beatles:  That's right...The Beatles!! They are only half a band at the moment, but thanks to the magic of AI, the Fab Four were able to resurrect an unreleased track that John Lennon originally recorded as a solo number after the band broke up. The song has created a lot of buzz among rock fans, and it's raced up the Adult Alt charts to number 20 in less than a week...