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Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

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What's their age again? Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker's unapologetically juvenile third album marked the first time the trio wrote consciously with an audience in mind
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jun 10, 2019 - 2:05 pm

The truth is, punk has rarely gone pop. Sure, there’s popular punk. There’s punk bands whose iconic logos and contributions to fashion and established fan bases (with said logos emblazoned on their bodies) will never die. And there’s pop-punk, of course, which has more or less come to encompass just about any band whose music is catchy, fast, and played on guitars (and it helps if they’ve ever done a stint on the Warped Tour). But you can count the ones who’ve really broken pop in America — sales, charts, radio, TV, mainstream magazine covers — on your fingers: Ramones, Green Day, The Offspring, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore. And right in the middle of those names, you have Blink-182 in 1999, crashing Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC's neverending TRL party with the very few power chords of "All the Small Things," a song whose "na na nas" have entered the Hall of Fame with the likes of "Gettin' Jiggy Wit It," "Hey Jude" and Steam’s "Kiss Him Goodbye."

Why did three tattooed Californians resonate so much and become more popular than several dozen of their Warped tourmates? Well, more than any of the above-named bands or their peers, Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker gave themselves a role to play. Enema Of The State was their third album, but it was their first to write consciously with an audience in mind. And that audience was young.

There was no shortage of rock bands playing to underdeveloped minds in 1999, the year when Limp Bizkit made "stick it up your — yeah!" a summer rallying cry. However, Blink came into the public eye not just mocking norms (behold the nudist breakthrough video for "What's My Age Again?") but satirizing them (enter the boy band-puncturing "All the Small Things" clip). Plenty of teenagers hated boy bands, and Eminem threatened to beat them up, but Blink-182 dared to envision themselves in the role, playing the Regular Guys striking those absurd poses in front of wind machines, turning something expensive cheap, showing what it actually looked like cut down to earth. They did their own stunts, and people liked that. While Fred Durst really sounded like he wanted to break something, and Eminem really did seem to live many of the nightmarish situations he joked about, Blink-182 didn't come off as hateful at all.

This depends, of course, on how much "Dumpweed"'s infamous chorus "I need a girl that I can train" rubs you the wrong way in 2019. And of course, that's how Enema Of The State kicks off, putting its best foot forward directly into its mouth. 20 years and far too few gun laws later, it’s harder to see what made toxic masculinity so appealing in the first place, but the line achieved its puerile success not only because it was so hard to take seriously but because the rest of the song is about how scared DeLonge is. The fact it’s immediately followed on the album by Hoppus' "Don't Leave Me," which gives the girl the last word ("She said don’t let the door hit your ass") helps. That two of the album's three big hits are rooted in romance ("All the Small Things") and empathy ("Adam’s Song") rather than the rubber-glove humor they were known for helps, too. Blink-182 didn’t sound like they wanted revenge on their high school, and they didn’t sound like they hated themselves, either. What they sounded like were boys that teenagers could relate to rather than ones promising girls the moon in perfect harmony from their private jet.

That also means they sang about diarrhea.

"Dysentery Gary," positioned directly before those aforementioned more tender singles in Enema’s track listing, helped underscore just how powerless (but in no way humorless) Blink’s masculinity sounded through DeLonge’s whine. "Girls are such a drag" he mutters while trying unconvincingly to come up with reasons that a girl should pick him instead of the perceived jerk who presumably won out: "He's a player, diarrhea giver!" Sure, "your mom's a whore" hews a little too close to the sort of trauma that awaits women who dare view their own comments sections. But they leave it at that and go on to contemplate suicide with "Adam's Song" with no small amount of love for the depressed protagonist.

That lightness and sociability is oddly what sticks out about Enema Of The State, an album that may be 20 years old but will be frozen forever at 17. Five years prior, Green Day's epochal, excellent Dookie grappled with social conditions like apathy, sexual frustration and watching the people you grew up with shrink in the rearview mirror. But it was downright apocalyptic compared to Enema’s teen movie, which is rarely deeper than the American Pie-style cinema of the period. Hoppus and DeLonge sang about the dilemmas of parties and college and the slut-shamey realization that even the horniest dude at the party might lose his nerve when he finally gets a chance with the girl who isn't wearing underwear. DeLonge also gets to sing "Aliens Exist," an outlier that is what it says it is, and somehow became the defining aspect of his legacy as he premieres a new History Channel series about UFOs while Blink soldiers on without him in 2019.

But the legacy of Enema Of The State will always be defined by what it accomplished: remarkably clean-sounding guitars, the hyperactive drumming of Barker (an all-time rock drummer finally getting his spotlight) and episodes of adolescent romance so silly that an entire second verse of the first single could be devoted to the transcript of a prank phone call. Just because one chorus lamented that "some girls try too hard" didn’t mean that millions of young women didn't get the underlying joke that many more guys don't try hard enough. And if these three couldn't solve their relationship problems, at least they helped make high school easier by providing some good jokes about it. What's their age again?

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A Million Miles of Fun: Listening To Len's "Steal My Sunshine" 20 Years L-A-T-E-R

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There were plenty of weird hits in the '90s, but there is absolutely nothing normal about “Steal My Sunshine," from Len’s genre to its famous sampled riff. And don’t even start us on the lyrics
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 23, 2019 - 10:28 am

The 1990s, particularly the musical culture that defined the decade, was marked by a lot of things: irony, disaffectedness, angst. But "randomness" might be the most crucial component. '90s radio was a Wild West of jock jams, Pearl Jam and Nirvana imitators, ska, big band swing, the tail end of New Jack swing, the front end of Timbaland and people of all walks of life who rapped with varying degrees of success, sometimes over loud guitars. And Cake. At least the 2010s developed social media as a support network to espouse complicated feelings over something like Rebecca Black (or "OId Town Road," for that matter). The '90s did not provide memes to bring people together and help make sense of "Tubthumping." We were all alone. But we made it.

Len's "Steal My Sunshine" was one of the decade's last true non-sequiturs. It doesn't matter that the mysterious Canadian outfit put out two albums before "Sunshine" home You Can't Stop the Bum Rush or has since apparently released two others. Len, definitively, in the public eye, came from nowhere, to whence they returned, but not before offering history some butter tarts. (If you've been wondering for 20 years, the Canadian treat resembles mini pecan pies sans pecans. They're better than you think.)

No one knows who "Len" is supposed to be, least of all Marc and Sharon Costanzo, the brother and sister who became one-hit wonders under that moniker. That's asking dangerous questions, like who Harvey Danger is or what the "182" in Blink-182 stands for. Let the chaos be and it will reward you with pop bliss. So we are avowedly not going to steal everybody’s collective sunshine and run "Now the funny glare to pay a gleaming tare in a staring under heat / Involved an under usual feat / And I'm not only among but I invite who I want to come" through Google Translate.

We are going to celebrate the Costanzo siblings’ giggly homemade boredom, though, because it gives that of Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas a run for their (piles of) money. You Can't Stop the Bum Rush is a pinnacle of randomness, the cherry (or smoked salmon) on the Dadaist sundae that is the 1990s. Musicians on this thing include hip-hop pioneers Kurtis Blow and Biz Markie, Poison guitarist C.C. Deville, Broken Social Scene plug Brendan Canning and future croaky alt-rap cult hero Buck 65, who also appears in cartoon form on the cover, second from left. The only thing more unlikely than this combination of people is the album bearing a hit single, which of course sounds like none of the above-named artists. (In this ridiculously entertaining interview with Marc Costanzo, he says Sum 41's Deryck Whibley was present when he recorded vocals. Was every Canadian musician involved with Len? Did 13-year-old Drake deliver pizza to the studio?)

Because this was the '90s, Len weren’t even the only Canadians working the Completely Irreplicable and Somewhat Frighteningly Eclectic circuit; sh*t would’ve hit the fan if Bran Van 3000 started a turf war (those kids had a girl-group cover of "Cum on Feel the Noize" that starts acoustic and ends techno). But Len were The Killers to BV3’s The Bravery, so to speak, and their reward was a song that your regular, non-weird-music friends remember in 2019.

"Steal My Sunshine" is one of those tunes that was everywhere in part because the seeds for it had been planted in part by the Andrea True Connection’s "More, More, More" saturating discos in 1976 (True herself had a bonkers story, acting in more than 50 porn films before reaching Number Four on the Hot 100). "Sunshine," which sampled True’s bridge for that iconic opening hook, was merely its final form. Stylistically, "Steal My Sunshine" is inarguably pop, though the tone of it is gloriously incongruent even with itself. Marc and Sharon’s voices border on twee, with a breezy delivery that speaks to directly to the song’s famous soft-serve vibe.

But the words, whatever you make of them, speak to fighting off something dark. Taking a cue from the canned candid dialogue of Weezer’s “Undone (The Sweater Song),” the Costanzos’ verses each begin with concerned friends discussing them: “Man, I’ve never seen Sharon look so bad before.” But this alarm is confusingly offset by the cheery narrators themselves. Are we supposed to believe Sharon’s hit rock bottom because she’s made [checks notes] an “eight-foot heap” of Slurpee straws? (Holy hell that’s a specific and esoteric image.) Is this a weird Canadian in-joke? Depression in 1999 sounds significantly preferable to depression in 2019.

The chorus, which everybody kind of knows (did you know you were going to be singing “keeping dumb and built to beat” before it appeared on the karaoke screen? You did not), has a loving sound to it, of the two reassuring each other of things that may keep their heads up. But that’s under the strange stipulation of promising to steal each other’s sunshine, not to prevent the thievery of said Vitamin D. This threatens to blow “Steal My Sunshine” wide open as potentially the most mysterious are-they-vampires song since Toadies’ “Possum Kingdom.”

You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush, on its face, looks like the weirdest part of the Len saga. Once it gets the hit out of the way, the rapping begins (“Cryptik Souls Crew,” “Beautiful Day”), in comes with the squeal of rock guitar (“Feelin’ Alright,” “Cheekybugger”), and occasionally some atmospheric lounge funk (“Junebug”) or krautrock (“The Hard Disk Approach”) takes up residence like they’re the friggin’ Avalanches. But plenty of ‘90s radio anomalies made albums that sounded nothing like their reason for being (wait ‘til you hear the rest of the Sugar Ray album “Fly” is on) and the biggest shock is how little “Steal My Sunshine” — which is very possibly an anti-sunshine song — makes sense when held up to the, um, light.

Ultimately, the underlying bizarreness, enigmatic characters (in that aforementioned Stereogum interview, Marc Costanzo mentions in passing that he and his sister “really haven’t talked in a while” as of 2016), and uncanny industry connections only serve to further cement “Steal My Sunshine” as a legendary pop blip. If you have more questions than answers now about a sweet tune that you assumed had less to ponder than, say, “Closing Time,” well, you’re welcome. Bring on the memes. Your move, Lil Nas X.

Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

Blink-182

Photo:  Paula Lobo/Walt Disney television via Getty Images

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Blink-182 Announce New Album 'NINE' Release Date, Plus New Song "Darkside"

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Fans will be able to pre-order the album at midnight
Jennifer Velez
GRAMMYs
Jul 25, 2019 - 12:02 pm

The wait is over. Veteran punk-pop trio Blink-182 have announced that their forthcoming eighth studio album NINE will drop Sept. 20.

The GRAMMY-nominated Southern California band have been teasing the follow-up to 2016's California album with new song releases, "Blame It On My Youth," "Generational Divide," and "Happy Days," but had not released an album date. 

Another track off the album, titled "Darkside," will drop at midnight. The album will also be available for pre-order at midnight. Fans that order will receive an instant download of the song. 

While fans have been able to get a taste of what some of the album will sound like, in previous interviews, the band, currently on tour in support of the new material, has been open about their new music's sound.

"I think we're taking everything that we've done in the past and building on it. Which is what we want to always be doing. The album will be more experimental than some past material," vocalist Mark Hoppus said. 

Pre-order NINE here. 

Dan Auerbach Talks Rebooting The Black Keys On New Album 'Let's Rock'

 

Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys

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Dan Auerbach Talks Rebooting The Black Keys On New Album 'Let's Rock'

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One half of the GRAMMY-winning blues-rock duo talks to the Recording Academy about getting back to basics with his longtime bandmate, Patrick Carney
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Jul 24, 2019 - 10:41 am

The Black Keys are almost innovators in reverse; they redefine familiar rock phrases like "stripped-down" and “back to basics." Case in point: Their ninth album (and first since 2014) is titled Let’s Rock, which makes ZZ Top's Eliminator sound like a downright Zen koan. There isn't going to be a more on-the-nose title this year unless Lil Pump surfaces with Let's Do Drugs or Luke Bryan unleashes Let’s Wear Jeans. The blues-damaged Ohio rock duo has risen from indie scraps to festival headliners with a clutch of radio hits in the early 2010s, which, under the tutelage of unofficial Third Black Key Danger Mouse, have come to incorporate lush-soul strings, buzzing synths and horny glam falsetto. (They also won four GRAMMY awards.)

Even though the duo was inactive for nearly half the decade, to hear singer/guitarist Dan Auerbach tell it, the band flicked back on like a light switch with no apparent loss of anything. According to the him, it was all gains: In the interim, he and drummer Patrick Carney both got married and had kids. The Recording Academy spoke to Auerbach about reigniting the band, his near-psychic connection to drummer Carney and their devout allegiance to touring.

The last time you guys released an album, you were going through a divorce. You and Patrick didn't release an album until you were both married again and raising new kids. Does the inspiration for new Black Keys music depend on what’s happening in your personal lives?

Not really. I’ve been playing in the Black Keys since I was 16… I was playing with the Black Keys before I was ever in any serious relationships. This is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in with one person.

Would you say this the happiest the Black Keys have ever been as a band?

It’s all relative. We’re definitely in a great place, a really musical place. I’m really excited about it.

I think there’s more songs in a major key on here than any of your other records.

I don't know, man.

A song like "Shine a Little Light," addresses death a little but also has this uplifting, gospel feel, like a Spiritualized song.

Well, I love gospel music. I collect gospel records, I’m a big fan. I know what you’re talking about.

So what’s it like trying to write blues-based songs about happiness?

Mmm… well, I sort of feel like everything's blues-based, any kind of genre. We just make 'em up. This record especially, we were just flying by the seat of our pants. The whole time we were just throwing ideas out, seeing if they stuck, and if they did, we just kept rolling with them. I was even doing that as I was writing lyrics. We would just do the music and then I would make up the vocal melodies afterwards. It could be a little strange but I had a lot of fun doing it.

"Eagle Birds" seems to be a lament for people who won't find a love like yours. That’s an interesting workaround, like you're singing someone else’s blues.

A lot of it was just unconscious. Having ideas and not being afraid to just sing what’s supposed to be there. Sometimes the lyrics can be really simplistic. But they’re supposed to be, you know? I’m thinking about how everything feels mixed together, the big picture. All the vowels and the sounds. Going by feel.

So what did the big picture end up being?

Maybe a Jackson Pollock. [Laughs.]

You didn’t plan for it to have no keyboards and be titled Let’s Rock.

I think we had six songs in a place that we liked ‘em, and none of them had anything but guitar, bass, and drums on them. And we were just like, "Man, let’s just keep doing them like this." That was all we ever really talked about it. The "let’s rock" thing, that only came later when we were thinking about a title.

They were the last words of a convicted murderer, right?

We were in the studio in Nashville, and it was the headline in the paper, in the same city, the day before we were recording. Months later, when we were thinking about a title, I remembered it, let’s put it that way.

Did you and Patrick work on music throughout the hiatus?

Pat and I didn’t talk a word about the session. We just showed up on the day in the calendar, didn’t talk about anything ahead of time. We didn’t even really talk about a direction before it happened, just let it unfold in front of us.

I love the simplicity of that.

Making music for us has never been the hard part. I love making music with Pat, it’s always so much fun. It was really great having that time off to work on so much stuff, and it made it that much more enjoyable when Pat and I got back together. We’ve always had a natural connection, ever since we were 16. In a roundabout way, we both want the same thing. We’re very different people, we hung out in different crowds. But the very first idea we had when we sat down, after four years, getting back together, the very first idea when we had, made the record, that song "Breaking Down."

So how did you decide it was time to make an album?

A year and a half ago, I was in the studio with Glenn Schwartz, the original guitar player from the James Gang; he was Joe Walsh's guitar hero, and he was mine, too. I used to go see him when I was a teenager and I loved his guitar and the amp he played. So when I started the Black Keys, that’s the type of guitar I tried to get and the amp I got. We were recording all his songs with Joe at the studio here in Nashville. It just brought back so many great memories that I just texted Pat, "Let’s make a Black Keys record." It was that loud electric guitar that drove the whole thing from the beginning.

Turn Blue seemed like you maybe went as far as away from your usual sound as you could.

We were out in California, hanging out in the Hollywood hills for a month. When you’re in sunshine every day, synthesizers make a lot more sense. [Laughs.] But when you’re stuck in Ohio in the winter, there’s something about a loud electric guitar that can warm you up.

Was the band reluctant to let in keyboards and other instruments in the first place, a decade ago?

We basically learned how to play our instruments and we learned how to record together. We didn’t know anything, and we made five records. Just experimenting on our own, never stepping foot into a real studio. It was a slow process for us, we didn’t have a lot of money so we couldn’t afford keyboards, let alone know how to actually work synthesizers. We had never really seen anybody do that. But when we decided to work with an outside producer and work in a studio for that first time, it was really eye-opening for us and we realized it didn’t have to be such a big deal to incorporate other instruments. It was nice to know that we could do that. But the heart of what we are is drums and guitar. And it felt so good to go back to just that. It felt cleansing, you know what I mean?

When you produce artists like Bombino or Lana Del Rey, do you feel like you’re vicariously living through sounds outside of the band’s comfort zone?

Honestly, I look at it all as part of the same fabric, just different threads. People like Dr. John opened my eyes to that, when I would listen to his records and hear all these different styles. We’d listen to lots of Captain Beefheart and he’d be all over the place, but it made lots of sense to me somehow. I look at the music I’ve done with Bombino or Lana as all coming from the same place.

You produced Dr. John's GRAMMY-winning Locked Down in 2012, his next-to-final release. What was your relationship like with him?

There was just a lot of love. Every time we spoke it felt good; he was still on a high from having the successful record and the resurgence [of popularity]. That meant a lot to him and [the sales] helped his family.

You poke fun at such rumors in the new video for "Go," but was there ever a moment when you honestly weren't sure if the Black Keys would return?

No, not at all. We just knew that we can’t just put out a record. We would put out a record twice a year if we could. But every time you put out a record, you’ve got to do, like, two years’ worth of touring. That was the holdup, basically. It just goes with it.

The band made a point of not "bundling" this record with things like ticket sales to get a higher chart debut. What bothers you and Patrick about the bundling strategy?

Pat’s the better person to talk to about that. I mean, ultimately, the artist ends up paying for the extra sales in the bundling, just to get higher chart numbers. 

When the Black Keys pulled out of Woodstock 50, were you worried it was looking like a Fyre Festival situation?

We didn’t know anything about it, to be honest. Us dropping out was completely unrelated, we just wanted it to be before tickets went on sale. And it was weeks later that they announced the festival was having problems.

Did you ever consider becoming a studio band like the latter-day Beatles and shunning the touring aspect?

No, we didn’t want to do that. It’s afforded us great lives and we’re able to invest it back into musicians that we believe in. It’s just finding that right balance, because I need to be able to make records and feel fulfilled in that way, too. We don’t take the road for granted.

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Mark Hoppus

 Photo: Sebastian Gollnow/picture alliance via Getty Images

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Blink-182 Want "Happy Days" In Latest Single From Upcoming Album

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The band dropped their latest single on the 182nd day of the year
Jennifer Velez
GRAMMYs
Jul 1, 2019 - 11:28 am

Blink-182 continue to tease their upcoming eighth studio album with yet another single release—this time an uplifting track called "Happy Days," released on the 182nd day of the year, which the band has dubbed "Blink-182 Day."

"It’s the 182nd day of the year which means it’s blink-182 day! To celebrate, here is our new song “Happy Days.” Consume it where you usually consume music," the band tweeted. 

In the past, the GRAMMY-nominated Southern California pop-punk band has dropped their usual humor for tougher subjects— songs like "Stay Together For The Kids" hit on pain and grief. "Happy Days" has the group adding a light at the end of the tunnel to similar feelings.

"Hey kid, don't quit your daydream yet/ I know you feel locked out in the cold," lead vocalist Mark Hoppus sings in the third single from the forthcoming album. "Seems like you’re lost and alone/ Hey kid, don't listen to your head/ It only fills you with dread and with doubt."

Read More: Blink-182's 'Enema Of The State' Will Never Actually Turn 20

He continues in the chorus: "I wanna feel happy days, happy days/ Happy days, happy days/ Walls of isolation inside of my pain/ And I don't know if I'm ready to change."

While the band has yet to announce an album release date, they've been dropping singles; They released the 50-second fast punk "Generational Divide" late June.

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