Like the rest of the world,
Billie Joe Armstrong needed to find some way to busy himself during the global pandemic of 2020. He opted for a series of covers he dubbed "No Fun Mondays," its name nodding at the glum realities of quarantine as well as the day he debuted his versions on the Internet. The project got off to a slow start. A version of
Tommy James & the Shondells' "I Think We're Alone Now" went up in April and a cover of
Prince's "Manic Monday" featuring a cameo from
Susanna Hoffs was unveiled in May, but it wasn't until he posted
Adam Schlesinger's "That Thing You Do!" in late August that the series gained momentum. From there, he posted covers on a weekly basis, all leading up to the late-November release of
No Fun Mondays. As a collected album,
No Fun Mondays is a bit of a lark, unexpected in its energy but not its contents. With two notable exceptions,
Billie Joe Armstrong chose tunes that stay well within his punk-pop and power pop wheelhouse, balancing standards by
Johnny Thunders ("You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory") and
Wreckless Eric ("Whole Wide World") with slightly cultish selections from
Avengers ("Corpus Christi"),
Stiv Bators ("Not That Way Anymore"), and
the Starjets ("War Stories"). There are a couple of fun ringers like
Eric Carmen's sugar-coated "That's Rock 'n' Roll" and "Amico" by the Italian singer
Don Backy, but the album's heart lies in the fuzzy, hooky three-chord pop that's been
Armstrong's stock-in-trade since the early days of
Green Day. The two exceptions --
John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" and
Billy Bragg's "A New England" -- aren't remade as power pop so much as bent a bit in that direction, so they fit in while still sounding a little bit different than the rest of the crowd. They're also the only moments that make a passing nod to the turmoil of 2020, which is fine: sometimes, it's better to have an album attempting to conjure some fun in isolation than to wallow in the darkness. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
![Wild World [Picture Disc 2 LP] [B&N Exclusive]](http://prodimage.images-bn.com/pimages/0602507160593_p0_v1_s90x140.jpg "Wild World [Picture Disc 2 LP] [B&N Exclusive]")
