Blink-182 (album)

explored post-hardcore influences with side-project Box Car Racer. After a decade of touring and making music, Blink-182 had reached a breaking point. The trio—guitarist Tom Delonge, bassist Mark Hoppus, and drummer Travis Barker—had seen their lives change dramatically as their band reached superstar levels of fame. Their fourth album, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket (2001), had gone multi-platinum just as its predecessor, and throughout 2002 they co-headlined with genre forebears Green Day in arenas and amphitheaters across North America. Beneath the surface, however, relations were becoming strained. They became conflicted on their goofy, nudist public image, and Hoppus and DeLonge began to clash creatively, with DeLonge striving for a heavier sound. The close bond between the once dynamic duo was fracturing with age: in his memoir, Hoppus observes that "[formerly] outgoing and boisterous, [Tom] became increasingly private and secretive," while acknowledging there was an emerging rivalry between their wives. Barker felt these dynamics change as the three all got married: "Blink-182 were no longer just three inseparable guys who were touring together." Later, Barker began dating model Shanna Moakler, inviting tabloid attention, adding to the "awkwardness" present in the band. Over the break, DeLonge began to suffer from significant back pain due to a herniated disc, and had privately become discontented by the constraints placed by the record label and the band's signature sound, which was becoming popularized elsewhere. He felt a desire to broaden his musical palette, and channeled these frustrations into an album, Box Car Racer, inspired by post-hardcore bands like Fugazi and Refused. Blink producer Jerry Finn naturally returned to engineer, and DeLonge, ostensibly trying to avoid paying a session player, invited Barker to record drums—making Hoppus the odd man out. It marked a major rift in their friendship: while DeLonge claimed he was not intentionally omitted, Hoppus nonetheless felt betrayed. "At the end of 2001, it felt like Blink-182 had broken up. It wasn't spoken about, but it felt over", said Hoppus later. this new band, called Box Car Racer, quickly evolved into a full-fledged side project, launching two national tours throughout 2002. The relationship between Hoppus and DeLonge had a low point, introducing a chasm in their chemistry present from that moment on: "The message was clear: Tom thought I held him back from greatness. It didn’t feel like we were best friends trying to conquer the world together anymore." The trio reportedly had "hundreds of discussions" on the issue, seemingly putting the conflict to rest. Hoppus described his desire for the album to experiment with different arrangements in a 2002 interview: "Before, we got one guitar sound that we changed a little bit through the record. This time we want to try a whole different setup for each song." Hoppus recalled that Barker entered the production process by urging the band to "[not think of the album] as the next Blink-182 record — think of it as the first Blink-182 record." Meanwhile, Barker also extended his love of hip-hop into the rap rock outfit Transplants, a collaboration with Rancid's Tim Armstrong. ==Recording and production==

, California. Blink-182 was recorded at several studios throughout 2003, but the initial plan started with a house. In January 2003, the band rented a mansion in the San Diego luxury community of Rancho Santa Fe, planning to record the entire album there. DeLonge had grown weary of booking studio time, and the house was a way to shake things up, as well as preserving a normal family lifestyle. He partnered with a local realtor who found them a gated villa in the suburb. Hoppus acknowledged the absurdity of their position: "It's happened so many times it’s a rock 'n' roll cliché. A band gets more than a decade deep into their career and ends up spending way too much time and money in the studio laboring over their magnum opus," he joked. The entire home was retrofitted as a provisional recording facility, and the windows were temporarily soundproofed. Ryan Hewitt, renowned for his work with Red Hot Chili Peppers and U2, was the main engineer behind the album. Hoppus and DeLonge lived nearby; The in-studio antics were recorded and posted on the official band website throughout the year, as well in the documentary series MTV Album Launch. Creatively, the trio set out to completely reinvent their approach to songwriting from the ground up. They ditched their typical previous recording process (writing and demoing several songs and recording them in a studio one instrument at a time) and instead approached each song together. At that point, the band had been working for sixty days and only had two finished songs. They continued working at other facilities around San Diego, like Signature Sound and Rolling Thunder, until they ran out of time. Looking for a change of scenery, they moved operations to Los Angeles' Conway Recording Studios—one of Finn's favorite locales. DeLonge and Hoppus stayed at the W Hotel with their families during recording, which only added to the record's increasingly large budget. Altogether, the recording period of the album, as well its mixing and mastering, lasted from January to October 2003. Previous Blink-182 sessions were recorded in three months. Though the band had their share of arguments in the past, making the album was a positive experience. Despite lingering friction due to Box Car, Hoppus and DeLonge got along during the process, discovering their chemistry was still intact. "We'd put the animosity behind us and were of one mind again, united in our desire to make something special," Hoppus recalled, observing that he and his partner "were back to encouraging each other’s creativity and helping one another with ideas." He was reportedly was originally conflicted on the new direction, but felt the goal of illustrating more depth to the band was achieved: "We needed to prove that there was something deeper than [...] the dudes that ran naked in the video," he said. The band also collaborated with The Cure frontman Robert Smith on "All of This". It was a dream come true for Hoppus, who had been significantly influenced by The Cure as a kid; The team sent Smith the bed track of the tune in hopes he would contribute; Smith obliged and recorded his parts in England. The three initially believed their legitimacy would be in question due to the goofy nature of their earlier work, to which Smith responded, "Nobody knows what kind of songs you are going to write in the future and nobody knows the full potential of any band. I really like the music you sent me." Hoppus played a vintage Vox bass guitar that was purchased from a shop in Liverpool where the Beatles had bought their gear, as well as a Roland synth bass on "Always". More unusual instrumentation was also present: the band toyed with turntables, harmonium organs, Polynesian Gamelan bells, Finn remained insistent in acquiring great sound; he initially insisted on tracking to tape, and ran cables in criss-cross patterns on the floor to avoid any interference. Tapes were run on a Studer 827 tape recorder, and they also used a Neve BCM10 secondary console (or "sidecar"). Hewitt praised the band's musicianship—"they played every note of that record on tape," he said—and was pleased overall with the space: “The drum sounds are probably better than any drum sounds I’ve gotten in a studio. It’s such a big room, and there are hallways leading off in all different directions so we can mic those and get really great sounds,” he said. Hoppus described the band's experimental approach in his memoir: ==Post-production and budget==

beside a grand piano while finalizing the album at Conway Recording Studios in September 2003. Blink-182 was far more expensive than previous albums by the band, with its budget spiraling out of control across its nearly yearlong development. The album ended up costing over one million dollars to produce. It was the band's first release on Geffen Records, which absorbed sister label MCA in 2003. Prior to it dissolving, MCA had attempted to penalize the band for breaking stipulations in their contract that they would have an album out by a specific quarter. But that leisurely pace came at a caveat: the release date kept getting missed and pushed back to the point where Jordan Schur, then-president of Geffen, made calls asking, "What is the absolute last possible second that we can turn this thing in and still make our release date?" and the band sent mixes to James Guthrie, who engineered The Wall. Ken Andrews also provided uncredited mixing work. ==Composition==

Music and style considered his lyricism on Untitled his most personal to that point. The album's general sound has been variously categorized as pop-punk, new wave, post-hardcore and scene music. It additionally pulls from concepts like New Romanticism, gothic pop, jangle pop, Kelefa Sanneh, writing for The New York Times, considered that the album may have been influenced by the growing presence of emo pop. "Much of the punk has been dissolved, the buzzsaw guitars faded into the corners, allowing room for staggering dynamics, cathartic guitar bursts and a weightier, more experimental and ambitious sound", wrote Tom Bryant of Kerrang!. In an interview with MTV Album Launch, Hoppus said that the desired effect of the album was for people to listen to it and say, "Wait a minute...that's Blink-182?" Barker envisioned the album like a "mini-movie". Frequently, publications remarked with incredulity at the band's "newfound" maturity. Lyrics continue to be autobiographical, but the band took more time than usual on their writing. DeLonge would routinely rewrite his sections upwards of four times. The mood was unsettling for DeLonge, whose brother is a Navy officer: "It was so weird because we'd all be glued to the TV, watching these bombs explode over another country. So I'd see all this and wonder where he was at, and then we'd have to go into the next room and sing or finish writing lyrics. I think it affected our moods throughout the day." Barker felt that anger and aggression – oftentimes due to his divorce from his first wife, Melissa Kennedy – sank into his recorded parts. In addition, some of the lyrics were inspired by the band simply socializing together: "We would just hang out for hours talking. It was really cool," said DeLonge. ==Songs==

The record opens with "Feeling This", which features flanged drums and an unconventional "syncopated Latin-flavored backbeat and a harmony-rich chorus" following a series of "half-barked" vocals. "Stockholm Syndrome", named for the psychological condition, focuses thematically on paranoia: "[It's about] being afraid of the outside world [and] convinced that people can hear your thoughts," Hoppus said. DeLonge called the valentines "real sincere, genuine [correspondence] from the worst war in history." DeLonge developed the song imagining a couple in a car, overcome by desire during a cascading rainfall. The original version of "Down" ran over six minutes long, and contained a drum and bass breakdown from Barker. "The Fallen Interlude", which functions as a near-instrumental outro to "Down", finds Barker showcasing different percussive techniques over a funk-tinged jazz sound. "Go" is an urgent, broken family diegesis from Hoppus filtered through vivid snapshots of his childhood: “Locked outside the door back in '83 / I heard the angry voice of the man inside / And saw the look of fear in my mother's eyes.” Hoppus confirmed the song was about domestic violence in the album's booklet, but stopped short of much else in an interview: "It's not specifically about my mother... I feel weird talking about it." "Asthenia" is named after the breakdown of life in space, and centers on a lonely, stranded astronaut viewing Earth from a capsule, indifferent about returning. DeLonge said the song was "about the loss of hope"; it was spawned by his personal torment regarding the future, and how war and famine might affect the world. The intro uses real NASA transmissions from the Apollo 9 space flight. "Always" is a love letter to new wave music, with an uptempo backbeat, dry production and dreamy keyboard riffs. The band often called the track the "'80s song" while making it. "Easy Target" and "All of This" stem from a story from producer Jerry Finn. While in middle school, Finn had a crush with a female classmate, Holly, who invited him over to her house. When he rode there on his bicycle, she and a friend drenched him with a hose, and he rode home humiliated. "All of This" is a "gothic-tinged pop song that uses strings and guitar effects" along with guest vocals from Robert Smith of the Cure to create a moody atmosphere. Hoppus described "Here's Your Letter" as about "people's inability to communicate with one another and how words and explanations only confuse the issues." "I'm Lost Without You" mixes an industrial loop with piano. The latter track took many months to create, and took "over 50" different tracks, including two drum sets combined during the last minute of the song. Barker described the idea for the percussion combination as "something we always wanted to do, but never got around to" and believed the song sounded like Pink Floyd or Failure. "Not Now", a B-side recorded during the sessions, is occasionally appended to the album. It features a church organ in its verses and guitar riffs reminiscent of the Descendents. Its subject matter continues the theme of complicated miscommunication and fading love. ==Packaging and title==

, who was inspired by English act The Jam and pop art. The title for the album was originally rumored to be Use Your Erection I & II, a parody of the Guns N' Roses albums Use Your Illusion I and II, but was revealed to be a joke Barker made to "get a rise out of people." DeLonge, in reference to previous joke album titles (such as Enema of the State), stated, "We didn't want to label it with a joke title that people might expect." As such, a Billboard article from the week of the album's release lists three rejected joke titles: Diarrhea de Janeiro, Vasectomy, Vasect-a-you and "Our Pet Sounds". To support the new album, Blink-182 created an entirely new logo, a "smiley face" with Xs for each eye and five arrows on the left side of its face. According to Barker, the Blink-182 logo originated at his clothing line, Famous Stars and Straps. Barker wanted to brand an icon for the band: "It just had to be a cool kind of happy face but I wanted arrows. You know, like the Jam were my favorite band, they always had arrows in their logos and stuff. It was just kind of inspired by pop-art." Reference points included the Black Flag bars or the Descendents' drawing of singer Milo Aukerman. Hoppus seconded this sentiment: "He spearheaded all the artwork for the record. There were smiley-face stickers and posters all over Los Angeles, and that was his idea." Barker invited his tattoo artist, Mister Cartoon, to create artwork for the record, and his friend Estevan Oriol to handle photography. "His style, incorporated into Blink's, didn't make us too gangster: it just gave us a bit of an edge. It was cool to feel like Blink had a dangerous side", Barker later remembered. The band originally wanted each CD booklet to be made from canvas material. Geffen gave the band a choice between the custom artwork or keeping the sale price down to US$12, and the band chose the latter, as they felt it was more important that young listeners obtain the record for less money. ==Promotion and singles==

The band launched the promotional cycle for the album with a performance on MTV's Total Request Live, where they performed on the roof top of the network's Times Square headquarters. Other marketing for the record included a "golden ticket" contest – the prize being a private Blink-182 show for the winner. MTV's website streamed the full album a week before its release, beginning on November 10. As promotion for the album and single release[s], the band performed "Feeling This" on Jimmy Kimmel Live! a week after the release of the album on November 26, 2003, and "Down" on Late Show with David Letterman on May 27, 2004. Performances of "I Miss You" and "The Rock Show" on The WB's Pepsi Smash concert series from June 10, 2004, were released on the Australian Tour edition of the album, as well as the "Always" single. The band picked "Feeling This" as the first single because it was representative of the transition the band had undergone since Take Off Your Pants and Jacket. A slightly different version of the song had been released previously as part of the soundtrack for the video game Madden NFL 2004 under the erroneous title "Action". "I Miss You" was commissioned as the record's second single in December 2003 when the band recorded a music video for it. "I Miss You" became arguably the most successful single from the album, becoming Blink-182's second number one hit on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart during the week of April 3, 2004, until dethroned by Hoobastank's "The Reason" two weeks later. Despite briefly considering "Easy Target" to be released as the album's third single, "Down" was released instead. The video for "Down", which features real-life ex-gang members, made its television premiere in June 2004. The single was a mixed success, peaking at number 10 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart during the week of July 31, 2004, but quickly falling off afterward. "Always" was announced as the fourth and final single from Blink-182 in August 2004. "It's gonna change people's lives and might actually change the world forever", DeLonge jokingly predicted. After deciding on the video concept, the clip was recorded and released in November 2004 A fifth single from the album ("All of This") was discussed; however, plans were dropped following the band's declaration of an 'indefinite hiatus' in February 2005. In response to the idea of "All of This" becoming a possible single, DeLonge joked "We would love it because it's a bad-ass song, and The Cure's Robert Smith sings on it, and that makes us cooler than everybody else." ==Critical reception==

The album received generally favorable reviews by music critics. Jenny Eliscu of Rolling Stone, while giving the album four stars, wrote that "...their lyrics are still unsophisticated and lovelorn, but even the poppiest tunes prove artful". Her review regards Blink-182 as "more experimental and harder-hitting than anything else [the band] has done". The album was given four stars by AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine, who called Blink-182 "an unexpected and welcome maturation from a band that just an album ago seemed permanently stuck in juvenilia." Spin described the record as emotionally intense and best experienced through headphones. Greg Kot of Entertainment Weekly wrote that "Despite their newfound earnestness, [the band] seem incapable of pretension. And in a career littered with songs about awkward moments, their latest is a dork classic." Scott Shelter of Slant gave the album four stars, stating "Giving up the fart jokes is risky business for Blink—but Blink-182 might just be the band's best album to date." Among the more negative reviews, Jason Arnopp of Q felt the majority of material forgettable but commended it as "some of their most imaginatively constructed work." The A.V. Club Stephen Thompson believed "The disc [does] meander in spots, and its most achingly sincere love songs become cloying." ==Commercial performance==

The album debuted at number three on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 313,000 copies. The album charted at number three, below fellow new album In the Zone by Britney Spears (number one) and above remix album Let It Be... Naked by the Beatles (number five). The untitled album charted highest in Canada, where it debuted at number one. The album was certified by the RIAA as platinum for shipments of over one million copies in 2004, It was certified by both the Music Canada and the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) as double platinum. The album has also reached platinum certifications in the United Kingdom. ==Touring==

for sailors and marines in August 2003. Blink-182 announced their first tour in support of Untitled on October 17, 2003, named the DollaBill Tour. The all-ages club tour featured support acts Bubba Sparxxx and The Kinison, and, as the name suggests, tickets were sold for $1. DeLonge explained the first return to small venues in several years in the initial press release for the tour: "For years we played in small clubs and that's where you can really connect with your fans." The tour ended shortly after the release of Untitled on November 21, 2003, at local San Diego venue SOMA. An additional concert at the Phoenix Concert Theatre on December 2, 2003, was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with My Chemical Romance as the opener. A performance at KWOD's Twisted X-Mas show shortly before Christmas 2003 became the final show of the year, and a European tour followed in mid-February 2004. During an Australian tour in March 2004, Barker injured his foot and the band was forced to cancel tour dates in Japan for the rest of the month. A U.S. tour took place from late April to May 2004, and a highly publicized tour featuring Blink-182 and No Doubt was performed during June 2004 in support of Untitled and No Doubt's The Singles 1992–2003. The cancelled Australian tour dates were rescheduled and performed in August and September 2004. The band appeared on September 17, 2004, at the MTV Icon tribute to The Cure, performing a cover of "A Letter to Elise" and "All of This", which was recorded and later broadcast on October 31, 2004. The band headed to Europe for a two-week tour near the end of the year, which culminated at their final show on December 16, 2004, at the Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland. Although the band had planned for a U.S. tour in support of "Always", tensions within the band had risen on the final European tour and the band announced an 'indefinite hiatus' on February 22, 2005, as breakup rumors swirled. After touring through 2004, the three essentially stopped communicating with one another. Hoppus initially had difficulty accepting the group's new direction. After some tragic events involving the band and its entourage, Blink-182 reunited in February 2009. ==Legacy==

in November 2013. Blink-182 was released at a cultural moment when the pop-punk and emo scenes were coalescing to a mainstream peak, and as a new wave of artists indebted to the band, like Fall Out Boy, Paramore, or Panic! at the Disco, came to fill their place. It also fell at the tail-end of an "imperial phase" for the band: fifteen months after its release, the band had broken up, ending what many fans regard as their classic period. In the ensuing years, Blink-182 developed a legacy due to the relative silence that followed it. "I Miss You" became a cross-generational 2000s classic, due in part to DeLonge's endlessly meme-able singing style. Shirts emblazoned with the album's "smiley" artwork became common fixtures in Hot Topic over the decades. And while the band would reconcile and continue to tour and make albums, Blink-182 remains a singular touchstone in its catalog—to both fans and the band themselves. All three members of the band viewed it as a "huge turning point" in their career, marking a change in the way they write and record music, as well as view themselves. writing that the record is generally considered by "fans, critics and band members alike as its best work, Blink's answer to Pet Sounds or ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band''." Jon Blistein of Radio.com called the album "an unquestionable masterpiece" in the site's "Not Fade Away" series, which examines "some of the greatest albums of the past few decades." and Eric Hamm from Citizen called himself a "big fan" of the album. Parker Cannon of the Story So Far described the album as a blueprint to remaining authentic in his career: "[Blink] were just like, 'Yeah, it is a crazy time, and we're going to write the most progressive body of work that we've ever done, and we don't necessarily care if you like it or not. This is who we are.' So seeing them doing that—and seeing other peers I've had in music not do that—has showed me how to stay the course and how to stay true." ==Track listing==

;Notes • "Feeling This" contains a sample from Captain America (1990). • Digital releases set the spoken-word section of track 4 "Violence", performed by Joanne Whalley, as a separate track titled "Stockholm Syndrome Interlude", incrementing all subsequent tracks by 1. • "Asthenia" begins with the sound of NASA transmissions from the Apollo 9 space flight. ==Personnel==

Per the Blink-182 liner notes. • Tom DeLonge – vocals, electric guitar (1, 2, 4–6, 8–14), acoustic guitar (3, 12) • Travis Barker – drums, percussion, looping (3), backing vocals (2), whispers (6) Additional personnel • Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. – keyboards • Robert Smith – vocals on "All of This" • Ron "Menno" Froese – guitar and vocals on "The Fallen Interlude" • John Morrical – additional keyboards on "All of This" • Ken Andrews – additional guitars and keyboards on "Violence" and "Obvious" • Joanne Whalley – spoken word on "Stockholm Syndrome Interlude" Artwork • Max Gramajo – cover illustration • Blink-182 – cover illustration, liner notes • Estevan Oriol – photography • Sonny Flats – design, layout • Scandalous – design, layout • Mr. Cartoon – design, layout Production • Jerry Finn – producer (all except 7), mixing engineer (1, 7, 9, and 13) • Sick Jacken – producer and engineer (7) • Tom Lord-Alge – mixing engineer (2, 3, 6, and 12) • Andy Wallace – mix engineer (4, 5, 8, and 11) • Ryan Hewitt – mix engineer (10 and 14), recording (all except 7) • Bunny Lake – vocal engineer (12) • Sam Boukas – assistant engineer • John Morrical – assistant engineer • James McCrone – assistant engineer • Alan Mason – assistant engineer • Seth Waldman – assistant engineer • Steve Sisco – assistant engineer • Femio Hernandez – assistant engineer • Brian Gardner – mastering engineer ==Chart positions==

Weekly charts Year-end charts == Certifications ==