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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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Tower Records 1999 Hong Kong

Tower Records 1999, Hong Kong

Photo: GARRIGE HO/South China Morning Post/Getty Images

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Poll: Which 1999 Album Have You Had On Repeat This Year?

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From Dr. Dre to Destiny's Child and Britney Spears to Moby, a lot artists released amazing albums back in 1999—we want to know which classic LP you're still jamming out to
Ana Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Sep 11, 2019 - 1:18 pm

If you miss the days of going to Tower Records, browsing through the new releases rack and leaving with a stack of shiny CDs to pop into your indestructible Discman, this is the poll for you! Even if you born too late to truly understand the extreme wave of 1999 music nostalgia currently taking place, 20 years later, perhaps you've attempted to relive the '90s through your own musical streaming journey.

Either way, we want to know which classic 1999 album you still can't get enough of, which you can tell us by taking our poll below. Make sure to read on to travel with us back to 1999, with an overview of the albums and a selection of their songs to listen to.

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Which 1999 Album Have You Had On Repeat This Year?

 

Let's take a quick trip back to the turn of the 21st century, when crop tops and ringer tees were having a major moment and iMacs came in five fun candy colors. On Nov. 16, 1999, West Coast hip-hop king Dr. Dre released 2001, his long-anticipated follow-up to his 1992 debut album, The Chronic. His 68-minute opus brought us classic G-funk records like "Still D.R.E." and "Next Episode," both featuring Snoop Dogg and "Forgot About Dre" with Eminem, the Compton icon's then newly signed protégée. The latter song would earn the pair a GRAMMY win for Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group at the 43rd GRAMMY Awards.

Over on the East Coast side of hip-hop, in Philadelphia, The Roots released their breakout third album, Things Fall Apart earlier in the year, on Feb. 23. The dynamic LP earned the group widespread acclaim and their first two GRAMMY nominations, including for Best Rap Album. The memorable, ultra-smooth "You Got Me" featuring Erykah Badu and Eve, earned The Roots their second nomination and first-ever GRAMMY win, for Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group.

Elsewhere in Los Angeles, the Red Hot Chili Peppers returned with their seventh studio album, Californication. The Rick Rubin-produced 15-track LP included classics like "Otherside," "Californication" and "Scar Tissue." The last song, still an alt-rock radio staple, earned the group the second of two nods at the 42nd GRAMMY Awards, where they also received a nomination for Best Rock Album.

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

In another, albeit less serious, moment from the radio-friendly SoCal rock glory days, Blink-182 gave us Enema Of The State, along with hits "What's My Age Again?" and "All The Small Things."

Making our way over from pop-rock to bubblegum pop, America's sweetheart Britney Spears started 1999 right with the release of her debut album, …Baby One More Time on Jan. 12. The choreography, fashion and lyrics of both the videos for the title track and "(You Drive Me) Crazy" will live on in our '90s time capsules. If you forgot to "E-Mail My Heart," don't worry, the AOL inbox is still up and running somehow.

Fellow pop icons Backstreet Boys were ready to take us boldly into Y2K with their all-white getups and fierce poses/dance moves, as immortalized in the iconic "I Want It That Way" video and on the Millennium cover art. "Larger Than Life" was an appropriate opening track for the their third LP, the best-selling album of 1999. The beloved boy band earned four GRAMMY nominations that year, including for Album Of The Year and Record Of The Year, for "I Want It That Way."

Over in Atlanta, three powerful women known as TLC were also channeling a big Y2K mood on their GRAMMY-winning third studio album, FanMail. It featured the eternally empowering anthems "No Scrubs" and "Unpretty," and earned the trio two GRAMMYs and six total nominations.

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A year and a half after releasing their self-titled debut, another powerful squad, Houston's Destiny's Child, followed up with the sophomore album, The Writing's on the Wall. With catchy-as-hell hooks on "Bills, Bills, Bills," "Jumpin', Jumpin'" and "Say My Name," the album is still one that can still turn the club up. The former track earned the group their first GRAMMY nod in 1999. The latter track, released as the album's third single, earned them two more nominations at the 43rd Annual GRAMMY Awards, along with their first win, for Best R&B Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal.

Over in the New York rave scene, DJ/producer/singer Moby moved from the underground to the global spotlight with his fifth studio album, Play. The eclectic GRAMMY-nominated LP became the best-selling electronica album with instant-classic moody house tracks like "Porcelain," "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?" and "South Side."

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Puerto Rican heartthrob Ricky Martin led another major music moment in 1999 with his GRAMMY-nominated self-titled fifth studio album, his first LP sung primarily in English. The album offers both English and Spanish versions of "Livin' la Vida Loca," while two of the other singles, "María and "The Cup Of Life," are offered as singular Spanglish versions. "Livin' la Vida Loca" earned Martin his first No. 1 hit on the Hot 100, as well as nominations for Record Of The Year at both the 42nd GRAMMY Awards and the inaugural Latin GRAMMYs in 2000. Along with him came the first major boom of Spanish-language artists, like Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, into the U.S. pop landscape.

Don't forget to let us know which 1999 album you still love the most in the poll above, and to share it with your friends as well. As you finish watching the videos below we're only left to wonder, which 2019 bops will still slap in—gasp—2039?

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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

Lizzo & Halsey

Lizzo & Halsey

Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Spotify

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Lizzo, Halsey, Shawn Mendes & More To Talk Mental Health On Upcoming Radio Special

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Tegan and Sara, Blink-182, Judah & the Lion and Lauren Jauregui will also take part in "I'm Listening," a two-hour radio show focused on breaking stigmas around openly discussing mental health
Ana Yglesias
GRAMMYs
Sep 3, 2019 - 1:47 pm

This Sunday, Sept. 8, Lizzo, Halsey, Shawn Mendes, Tegan and Sara and others will take part in "I'm Listening," a two-hour radio special focused on breaking stigmas around openly discussing mental health. Blink-182, Disturbed, Korn, Judah & the Lion and Lauren Jauregui are among the diverse group of musicians, athletes and medical professionals/mental health advocates joining the conversation hosted by Entercom/Radio.com. The annual broadcast will once again mark the start of National Suicide Prevention Week.

All the artists participating have been open about their own struggles with mental health. Earlier this summer, self-love advocate Lizzo posted on social media about the depression she was facing, following up the next day with a powerful message to her fans.

She wrote, "I learned in the last 24hrs that being emotionally honest can save your life. Reaching out may be hard but as soon as I did it, I was immediately covered in love. I used to think of sadness as a constant with fleeting moments of joy in between…but it's a wave… My sadness can be as temporary as my joy."

She added a personal note about her own triggers, prompting readers to question what brings up sadness for them. "I love that I can use my sadness constructively in real time for gratitude. What triggers your sadness? What do you do when those buttons are pushed? What do you love about yourself in those moments of darkness?"

Feb 11, 2019 – 1:17 pm

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Sara Quin of Tegan and Sara spoke to mental health challenges of the LGBTQ+ community as they continue to fight for equality. "I think issues around identity and mental health are intrinsically linked," she said in a statement for "I'm Listening."

"It makes sense to me now, that if I don't talk about my feelings, I'm not going to feel well, I'm not going to be well," Quin added. "Through the work that we do with the Tegan and Sara Foundation, and some of the staggering statistics surrounding queer people and mental health, we hope that by talking about some of our experiences as young people, that it will encourage others to do the same."

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Entercom's Chief Programming Officer Pat Paxton echoed the importance of the conversation—and talking about mental health in general—in the statement. "We are doing our part to end the stigma by encouraging people to talk. Like millions of others, my family has been impacted by mental health issues and the effect it has on friends and families is devastating. 'I'm Listening' is when our vast network of radio stations and digital platforms unite on the same day, at the same time, to ultimately save lives. If we help just one person, our time will have been well spent."

In addition to being able to tune into the program, which will be aired on all Entercom radio stations at 7 a.m. local time this Sunday, everyone is encouraged to join the conversation by tweeting to @imlistening_org, using the hashtag #ImListening or submitting your story on their website. Radio.com writes, "Select stories will included in the show." Listeners can also call in live to participate or listen to the special episode online after it airs.

If you are or know of a musician in need of mental health support, please visit MusiCares to learn more about your options. If you or a loved one are in crisis, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or the Crisis Text Line (text TALK to 741741) are there to listen; you are not alone.

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Sheer Mag

Photo by Marie Lin

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Sheer Mag Have The Right Stuff

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Lead singer Tina Halladay talks to the Recording Academy about the Philly four-piece's sophomore LP, 'A Distant Call,' the majesty of Lizzo and how to be the cool aunt to end all cool aunts
Dan Weiss
GRAMMYs
Sep 3, 2019 - 1:10 pm

Like Rhiannon Giddens or Jason Isbell, Sheer Mag are that rare thing: musical traditionalists with something new to say. They appropriate the onetime sleazy riffs of Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and singer Tina Halladay’s favorite band Thin Lizzy (she has a full-length tattoo of Phil Lynott on her thigh) for trenchant jams about slumlords ("Fan The Flames"), murdered maquiladora workers ("Can't Stop Fighting"), and fat-shaming concern trolls ("The Right Stuff"). Needless to say, this isn’t your dad's cock-rock. In fact, we should probably stop calling it "cock-rock."

After a string of increasingly awesome EPs and a well-received full-length, the Philly four-piece just released their second album A Distant Call, which expands their sound into both louder (the Judas Priest-like "Steel Sharpens Steel") and prettier (the '80s Fleetwood Mac turn "Silver Line") realms, and combines their personal and political songs like never before, in part because the frontwoman suffered the loss of a partner, a job and a family member since the last recording. Halladay spoke to the Recording Academy over the phone from Philly about the new album, the majesty of Lizzo and how to be the cool aunt to end all cool aunts.

What did you set out to do differently this time after Need to Feel Your Love?

It was a huge difference going to digital for recording the vocals from, like, a tape machine where I had to do everything in one take. That was the right move.

You stuck with lo-fi production for a long time. Did you all feel pressure to make the digital jump?

Not really, but people have always told me they can’t hear my vocals clearly. We take such a long time to do things that [digital] is cost-effective as well. [Laughs.] The instrumental parts sound so much better, and I wanted to try and do the vocals in a different way. Because it’s stressful and limiting to have to do it all on one track.

I can hear the need to make them more legible, especially when the lyrics are so specific and politically focused.

Definitely, that’s something that had been bothering me. I don’t think we realized how illegible they actually were to some people.

Sometimes the lyrics can be secondary when you instantly love the sound of a band, but after you have a feel for them you can focus on that other layer.

Maybe [a fan] doesn't agree with what we’re saying and it would influence them. [Laughs.] They could listen and it would change their mind. I’m excited for people actually hear what I’m saying.

Have any Sheer Mag fans ever thanked you for opening their eyes to world issues?

I’ve had friends with Mexican ancestry who live in Texas near the border thank us for "Can’t Stop Fighting." But mostly it’s women coming up to me and telling me "You’re the reason I started a band." When YouTube comments and idiots tell women what they can’t be in a band, unless they’re industry-standard hot or conventionally attractive to a bunch of sh*theads. More women have told me that than I can even count.

Has that been the most gratifying part of your success so far?

I think so! That and my friend who works in the Girls Rock Camp in Austin sent me a photo of a collage that a young girl had made of me; they all make different collages of different artists. I cried.

You very specifically of all bands seem like your stage presence conquers the room, so I can see why that would be very inspiring.

Thank you, yeah, it’s always a strange feeling inside me when we’re playing. If people are being assholes, I use whatever energy is being brought to me by the people in the room most of the time. That could be feeding off of everybody’s excitement or it could be anger from whatever person being rude. It’s something I talk to other people in bands about, being energy vampires.

Where have you experienced asshole crowds?

There was this funny time in Denver, the guy was in front of me, leaning on the PA speaker and texting the whole time, while everyone else around him was so amped. So I leaned over and he didn’t even notice me and I took his phone out of his hand with my two fingers and he was furious. I had it for maybe like, half of a song and then gave it back to him. Then he went back to doing it and a bunch of 15-year-olds start pushing him around. I thought he was going to murder me but it was so funny. He was a nerd, somewhere I have a picture someone took of him looking really serious.

A Distant Call seems to connect the personal to the political more in the lyrics.

Yeah, I think it’s melding the two aspects that we usually write about, bringing them together instead of in separate songs. Everything is political in our lives so it only makes sense.

You went through some significant tragedies between the last album and this one. How did those find their way into these songs?

The way that Matt [Palmer] and I write together is really personal and we have to be—I mean, we are close friends—but for him to help me express those ideas and feelings of despair and everything I felt when my father died, and the fear and frustration of the world treats fat women and most of the things that I deal with… we have to be pretty close.

Right.

"Cold Sword" deals with my feelings about my dad, who wasn’t very present in my life except as a force of terror. I hope other people who’ve had similar experiences will connect to that. "The Right Stuff" deals with unspoken things about looks and the conversation about how society treats fat women. But Lizzo is famous now… I’ve loved her for a long time, I saw her playing at [Philly venue] the TLA a few months ago and it was insanely packed.

I got shut out of that show!

Our touring guitarist Kora Puckett's brother Aaron co-wrote Lizzo's song "Boys" so he was able to get me a VIP pass. I was crying the entire time. She’s so powerful.

I did catch her opening for Sleater-Kinney a few years ago, so it doesn’t seem crazy that she’d share a bill with Sheer Mag someday.

She's really, really famous now, though.

You mention SNAP benefits on "Blood From A Stone" and I don’t think I know many rock songs that name-check food stamps.

That time of my life was really… I was a manager at one of the locations for a service that picks up and drops off your laundry on bikes.  I had just broken my thumb on the way to work and they basically forced me to sign papers that say I quit, because I didn't know what was going on and I wasn't really educated in what I should’ve done. I was living paycheck to paycheck at that point so I had no way to make money because I was injured. Luckily, I had health insurance because if I didn't, it would’ve been really, really bad.

Do you ever get recognized around Philly?

Yeah. [Laughs.] I did once in Wal-Mart. Actually, I was in Long Island with my mother a few weeks ago walking with my niece, she’s like, 11, and has no idea. Someone drove by and yelled "Sheeeer Magggg!" I was like “What up, bitch!” and played it all cool for my niece.

Sleater-Kinney Are Embracing Whatever Comes Next