Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

At the onset of the millennium, Blink-182 became one of the biggest international rock acts with the release of their third album, the fast-paced, melodic Enema of the State (1999). It became an enormous worldwide success, moving over fifteen million copies. Singles "What's My Age Again?", "All the Small Things", and "Adam's Song" became radio staples, with their music videos and relationship with MTV cementing their stardom. It marked the beginning of their friendship with producer Jerry Finn, a key architect of their "polished" pop-punk rhythm; according to journalist James Montgomery, writing for MTV News, the veteran engineer "served as an invaluable member of the Blink team: part adviser, part impartial observer, he helped smooth out tensions and hone their multiplatinum sound." The glossy production set Blink-182 apart from the other crossover punk acts of the era, such as Green Day, and this style and sound made for an extensive impact that permeated its way through the Southern California punk scene and beyond, igniting a new wave of the genre. Behind the scenes, the three were adjusting to this new lifestyle. "After years of hard work, promotion, and nonstop touring, people knew who we were, and listened to what we were saying ... it scared the shit out of us," said bassist Mark Hoppus. Each musician was now wealthy and famous, which brought both comfort and challenges: DeLonge reacted to fame with a desire for privacy, and both Hoppus and Barker had been the subject of stalking. In the public eye, Blink became known for their juvenile antics, including running around nude; the band made a cameo appearance in the similarly bawdy comedy American Pie (1999). While grateful for their success—which the trio parlayed into various business ventures, like Famous Stars and Straps, Atticus Clothing and Macbeth Footwear—they gradually became unhappy with their goofy public image. In one instance, the European arm of UMG had taken photos shot lampooning boy bands and distributed them at face value, making their basis for parody appear thin. In response, a conscious effort was made to make the trio appear more authentic with their next album. However, the relentless pace also was wearing on the group, and the growing divide between art and commerce began to frustrate them. The band was rushed into recording the follow-up, as according to DeLonge, "the president of MCA was penalizing us an obscene amount of money because our record wasn't going to be out in time for them to make their quarterly revenue statements. [...] And we were saying, 'Hey, we can't do this right now, we need to reorganize ourselves and really think about what we want to do and write the best record we can.' They didn't agree with us." To satiate fans in the interim, the band issued a stopgap live album, The Mark, Tom, and Travis Show (The Enema Strikes Back!), displaying more of their high-energy antics, in November 2000. ==Recording and production==

Pre-production The band began pre-production in December 2000, using ideas they had been developing on the road over the past year. DeLonge joked to a BBC reporter that the material may not be so fresh: "About this time in our careers we start running out of guitar riffs and ideas, so we start pulling out of the archives," he laughed. Hoppus likened it to "anti-thought", with the goal of not overthinking it – simply making something friendly and enjoyable for a wide audience. "In a way, they ended up being the most fun," he conceded. Barker also proposed being promoted to official partner in the band; prior to 2001, he had been considered a touring musician only, and while he had arranged the songs on Enema, he received no publishing residuals. Hoppus and DeLonge obliged – they wanted his input on songwriting. Finn came into the process during the last week of pre-production, and was very fond of Barker's drum parts, which the other musicians found unconventional and "algebraic". Barker recorded his drum parts in "two or three days" while DeLonge and Hoppus watched television upstairs. When the drums were finished, the band returned to San Diego to record the majority of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket at Signature Sound, where they had also recorded its predecessor. While the band worked with few days off, the sessions also proved to be memorable: "We took long dinner breaks, ate Sombrero burritos, watched Family Guy and Mr. Show, and laughed way too hard," said Hoppus. In 2013, Hoppus referred to Take Off Your Pants and Jacket as the "permanent record of a band in transition ... our confused, contentious, brilliant, painful, cathartic leap into the unknown." Hoppus remembered that it was the first time the three had worked in opposition to one another, and noted that the sessions sometimes prompted arguments. He felt that the sessions created an unspoken competition between him and DeLonge, between who could write the superior lyrics: "Our confidence and insecurity begat some heated differences, sometime to the point where we had to leave rooms and cool down," he said in 2013. On the technical side, all of the vocals were recorded with Blue's Bottle condenser tube microphone. DeLonge augments his guitar setup with chorus pedals, flangers and delays – "just really light, tasteful touches", he felt. Barker used a variety of snare drums in his process, which he tuned tightly to his liking; the album uses brands like Ludwig Coliseum and Brady, and many came from Orange County Drum and Percussion. He liked using different snares to match what he felt the song required. To that end, the team rented a Tama snare called "Big Red" that Guns N' Roses used to make "November Rain". According an EQ piece published after the album's release, Finn was so meticulous in quality that he A/B tested speaker wire from an independent hi-fi shop. Hoppus grew wary of the painstaking approach: "You go out and spend [hundreds of thousands of dollars] on the best recording equipment in the world just to record onto tape how bad of a musician you really are." Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. returns to add keyboard parts, while Tom Lord-Alge served as the mixing engineer, which was conducted at Encore Studios in Burbank. He typically worked out of his Miami space, but the band had him mix the album in California instead. The band also returned to work with Brian Gardner at Bernie Grundman Mastering in Hollywood. A writer for EQ magazine profiling Finn was present at the mastering session and characterized the atmosphere as "easygoing, the band was relaxed." ==Packaging==

, humorously representing the album's third track, "First Date". The title is a tongue-in-cheek pun on male masturbation ("take off your pants and jack it"). Previous titles had included Epileptic Proctologist, Journalist Joe Shooman called the title "a glint of sharp intelligence behind the boys' humour as it draws oblique attention to the fact that, latterly, Blink-182 had often been encouraged to get naked in order to promote themselves. It's a very self-aware album title in that context and a portent, perhaps, of what was to come". icons for each band member: a jacket, a pair of pants and an airplane. Delonge and Hoppus' symbols became the pants and jacket, respectively, leaving Barker the airplane despite begging his bandmates not to assign him the symbol, citing his fear of flying, but he took it anyway. CD copies of the album were initially released in three separate configurations for the first million printings: The multiple bonus-track versions were only available for a limited time before being replaced by an edition without any bonus tracks. ==Composition==

While Take Off Your Pants and Jacket fits squarely within the band's "commercial and conventional" pop-punk mold, it quietly introduces disparate elements into the band's sound. It ranges from bracingly fast-paced numbers to slower, more emo-indebted songs. Roger Catlin of the Hartford Courant said the album boasts "tight little anthems, with precision playing, staccato lyrics and sing-along choruses." Joshua Klein from The Washington Post described its familiar "sturdy pop elements — chiming guitars, exciting drums, endearing vocals and ear-catching chord changes." DeLonge's droning guitar style was influenced by post-hardcore bands Fugazi and Refused. "As Blink grew, I wanted to contribute progressive elements: bring some modernism into the band and change what everyone thought we were capable of," DeLonge said. Part of that stemmed from the band's desire to illustrate they were not a boy band, as they felt had been marketed. Additionally, DeLonge's adenoidal vocal twang, with its "cartoonish California diction", is prominent. Barker's drumming is more technical than before; "Don't Tell Me It's Over" uses an Afro-Cuban bass drum and hi-hat pattern, and another song takes the beat from James Brown's "Funky Drummer". One song that developed midway through recording used looping for a danceable drum 'n' bass style. Barker used these affectations to differentiate the band from the rest of the pop-punk pack: "Every punk rock band sounds recycled," he confided to Modern Drummer in 2001. "It's the same recycled beats. Believe me, I know where you took that fill from. I'm trying to bring more to the table." ==Songs==

Take Off Your Pants and Jacket has been called a concept album chronicling adolescence and associated feelings. The band did not consider them explicitly teenage songs: "The things that happen to you in high school are the same things that happen your entire life," said Hoppus. "You can fall in love at sixty; you can get rejected at eighty." It serves as the opposite of the band's typical "party" image presented to the media, with heavily politically-charged lyrics. "Online Songs" was written by Hoppus about "the thoughts that drive you crazy" in the aftermath of a breakup, and is essentially a follow-up to "Josie", whose name is dropped at the beginning of the song. The song is downbeat and melancholy, filtered through "tuneful guitar lines reminiscent of the Cure and hefty drum patterns". The song tells the story of two teenagers meeting a rock concert, and, despite failing grades and disapproving parents, falling and staying in love. It was inspired by the band's early days in San Diego's all-ages venue SOMA. "Reckless Abandon" was penned by DeLonge as a reflection on summer memories, including parties, skateboarding and trips to the beach. "Shut Up", a "broken-family snapshot", revisits the territory of youthful woes, described by Shooman as a "fairly familiar rites-of-passage tale" that "adds to general themes of isolation, alienation and moving on to a new place that pervade Take Off Your Pants and Jacket". "Please Take Me Home" concludes the standard edition of the album and was written about the consequences of a friendship developing into a relationship. Several bonus tracks follow on separate editions; some continue the teenage theme, while others are joke tracks. Notably, "What Went Wrong" is an acoustic track; while DeLonge felt "staple acoustic songs" were big for groups at the time (such as Green Day's "Good Riddance"), the band wrote all of their songs from their inception on acoustic guitars, and he felt he would rather have "What Went Wrong" in its original form. "You grow up and realize, 'Fuck! Who gives a fuck about punk rock?'" he said. "There are so many great forms of music out there, and you grow beyond wanting to listen to or write something because your parents will hate it." Producer Jerry Finn suggested lyrics for the song after viewing a documentary on the first Soviet nuclear test; in the film, an aged Soviet physicist says of watching the explosion, "There was a loud boom, and then the bomb began fiercely kicking at the world." ==Promotion==

To promote Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, MCA Records released three singles: "The Rock Show", "First Date" and "Stay Together for the Kids", all of which were top-ten hits on Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The band recorded a television commercial for the LP, starring Hoppus as a proctologist and Barker as his patient. Blink-182 performed on the Late Show with David Letterman and ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien in support of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket''. Additionally, the band undertook a series of in-store CD signings, at chains like Tower Records and CD World. They also stopped by mom-and-pop record shops, as part of a targeted campaign to "game" the charts to win a number-one debut. "The way album sales were measured, you had to spread them out. Some sales were weighted more than others. [...] It was a whole complicated system that every label was trying to game, but it’s how you got the numbers," Hoppus remembered in his book. ==Commercial performance==

Take Off was a marquee rock release of the season, alongside acts like Staind and Tool; writer Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times viewed it an "unlikely modern-rock radio blockbuster in an era otherwise dominated by vapid nu-metal." Like many high profile releases of the era, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket was leaked on the Internet prior to release. The album's leak is mentioned in the book How Music Got Free, which profiles the warez group Rabid Neurosis, as well as the North Carolina CD manufacturing facility from which the album leaked. Steven Hyden, in a piece for Uproxx, recounts its leak in the context of record company greed, opining that "Take Off Your Pants And Jacket is a particularly apt signifier of this unceremonious crash-and-burn climax to a depraved and decadent time." At any rate, the assured success allowed the band, according to Brittany Spanos at Rolling Stone to "fully settle into their status as one of the biggest rock bands in the world." "There's nowhere to go but down," Hoppus joked. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, with first-week sales of 350,000 copies. Billboard attributed the success of the record overall as a result of the success of the first single, "The Rock Show". The album debuted at number one on the Canadian Albums Chart, selling 47,390 copies. It also reached number one on Germany's Top 100 Albums. The album was the first album by a punk rock band to debut at number one in the United States. It was later certified double platinum in May 2002. It had moved three million units worldwide by December. Take Off Your Pants and Jacket is the second-highest selling album in the band's catalogue, and has sold over 14 million copies worldwide. ==Critical reception ==

Critical reception of Take Off Your Pants and Jacket in 2001 was generally positive. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone was generally the most effusive of the positive reviews, praising the unpretentious attitude of the band: "As they plow in their relatively un-self-conscious way through the emotional hurdles of lust, terror, pain and rage, they reveal more about themselves and their audience than they even intend to, turning adolescent malaise into a friendly joke rather than a spiritual crisis." Darren Ratner of AllMusic felt likewise, writing that the record is "one of their finest works to date, with almost every track sporting a commanding articulation and new-school punk sounds. They've definitely put a big-time notch in the win column". British publication Q offered the sentiment that "when they stop arsing around for the sake of it, Blink-182 write some very good pop songs". The Village Voice called the sound "emo-core ... intercut with elegiac little pauses that align Blink 182 with a branch of punk rock you could trace back through The Replacements and Ramones Leave Home, to the more ethereal of early Who songs". Aaron Scott of Slant Magazine, however, found the sound to be recycled from the band's previous efforts, writing, "Blink shines when they deviate from their formula, but it is awfully rare ... The album seems to be more concerned with maintaining the band's large teenage fanbase than with expanding their overall audience." Joshua Klein from The Washington Post felt it was stagnant, critiquing its formula and "cookie-cutter" approach. Entertainment Weekly felt similarly, with David Browne opining that "the album is angrier and more teeth gnashing than you'd expect. The band work so hard at it, and the music is such processed sounding mainstream rock played fast, that the album becomes a paradox: adolescent energy and rebellion made joyless". British magazine New Musical Express, who heavily criticized the band in their previous efforts, felt no more negative this time, saying "Blink-182 are now indistinguishable from the increasingly tedious 'teenage dirtbag' genre they helped spawn". The magazine continued, "It like all that sanitised, castrated, shrink-wrapped 'new wave' crap that the major US record companies pumped out circa 1981 in their belated attempt to jump on the 'punk' bandwagon." More recent reviews have subsequently been positive. Music critic Kelefa Sanneh complimented the album in a New Yorker profile: "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket is by turns peppy, sulky, and stupid—Blink-182 at its finest." Website AbsolutePunk, in part of their "Retro Reviews" project in 2011, called Take Off Your Pants and Jacket the band's best effort; reviewer Thomas Nassiff referred to it as "a transitory record for Blink-182, but you can't tell just by listening to it on its own. It's developed and it's full – it feels holistically complete, dick jokes and all". In 2005, the album was ranked number 452 in Rock Hard magazine's book The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time. in 2021, Stereogums Grant Sharples felt it improved on its predecessor; "it's an endearing time capsule [...] replete with refined songwriting and incredibly infectious hooks." Richard Blenkinsop of Reverb.com called the album "a masterclass in pop punk writing." Conversely, Hyden, in the aforementioned Uproxx article, suggests the album is middling: "[Take Off] had some hits but [is] also a record no fan would ever consider their best work." Accolades • denotes an unordered list ==Touring==

, Barker performed with a red, white, and blue drum kit. The Take Off Your Pants and Jacket supporting tour began in April 2001 in Australia and New Zealand. The band returned to the US to promote their new record on the Late Show with David Letterman in June 2001. The band again received criticism for "selling out", but the band argued by way of mitigation that their tickets were consistently offered at lower prices than those of other groups of their stature, and by accepting corporate links they could continue to give fans a good deal. Likewise, the band partnered with Ticketmaster, setting up a special website where fans could purchase pre-sale tickets for each show. Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio and Midtown. Each show winkingly began with the overture of "Also sprach Zarathustra" and debuted a flaming sign reading "FUCK". The band had initially contacted Eminem in hopes of partnering for a tour, but he was too busy. For Barker, he would have preferred to tour with a stylistically different artist: "If it was my choice, we wouldn't tour with other punk bands," he said in 2001. The band rescheduled European tour dates in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. "After the attacks the world kind of went into freeze mode and we didn't know whether to carry on with things or not ... so we decided we'd rather everyone was safe and play the shows a little later instead," said Hoppus shortly thereafter. In the wake of the tragedy, the band draped an American flag over a set of amplifiers and drummer Barker played on a red, white, and blue drum kit. At one concert, DeLonge invited the crowd to join him in his cheers of "Fuck Osama bin Laden!" The European dates were canceled a second time after DeLonge suffered a herniated disc in his back. In 2002, the band co-headlined the Pop Disaster Tour with Green Day. The tour was conceived by Blink-182 to echo the famous Monsters of Rock tours; the idea was to have, effectively, a Monsters of Punk tour. The tour, from the band's point of view, had been put together as a show of unity in the face of consistent accusations of rivalry between the two bands, especially in Europe. Instead, Green Day's Tré Cool acknowledged in a Kerrang! interview that they committed to the tour as an opportunity to regain their reputation as a great live band, as they felt their spotlight had faded over the years. Several reviewers were unimpressed with Blink-182's headlining set following Green Day. "Sometimes playing last at a rock show is more a curse than a privilege ... Pity the headliner, for instance, that gets blown off the stage by the band before it. Blink-182 endured that indignity Saturday at the Shoreline Amphitheatre," a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in 2002. The band released a second DVD of home videos, live performances and music videos titled The Urethra Chronicles II: Harder, Faster Faster, Harder in 2002. Likewise, the 2003 film Riding in Vans with Boys follows the Pop Disaster Tour throughout the U.S. ==Legacy==

, an artist who arrived in its aftermath. A 2001 Federal Trade Commission report condemned the entertainment industry for marketing lewd lyrics to American youth, specifically naming Blink-182 as among the most explicit acts. It debuted at the peak of a musical moment the band helped foment, a brand of snotty pop-punk popularized with bands following Blink's footsteps like Sum 41, Simple Plan and Good Charlotte, all of whom released seminal albums in 2001–02. Its songs became common on peer-to-peer sites like Kazaa and LimeWire, and its sound proved influential: its ubiquity made it a "sonic bible for many millennials" according to Kat Bein of Billboard. Others agreed: “If you're part of a certain twenty-something age bracket, you can recite every chorus [of the album]" replied Zach Schonfeld of The Atlantic. The album was an influence on artists like Avril Lavigne, Mod Sun You Me at Six, Knuckle Puck, and Neck Deep, who covered "Don't Tell Me That It's Over" in 2019. It also marked a transitionary period in the group, being the first time the trio began to fracture. Shortly after the album's release, the 9/11 attacks prompted a pause in the band's schedule, which led DeLonge to explore a slower, more heavy musical style—which became the album Box Car Racer (2002). 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. ==Track listing==

;Notes • On the clean version of the album the track "Happy Holidays, You Bastard" is listed as just "Happy Holidays", and is an instrumental with the exception of the very last line, due to nearly every other line containing strong language and/or crude sexual references. • On the limited edition bonus track versions, "Please Take Me Home" has 182 seconds (roughly 3 minutes) of silence at the end, likely to hide the hidden tracks, which are not listed on the back cover, and also to reference the band's name. • The clean version omits the second bonus track on each edition. ==Personnel==

;Blink-182 • Mark Hoppus – bass, vocals • Tom DeLonge – guitars, vocals • Travis Barker – drums ;Artwork • Tim Stedman – art direction, design • Marcos Orozco – design • Justin Stephens – photography • Intersection Studio – symbol design ;Additional musicians • Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. – keyboards ;Production • Jerry Finn – production • Tom Lord-Alge – mixing • Joe McGrath – engineering • Joe Marlett – assistant engineer • Ted Reiger – assistant engineer • Robert Read – assistant engineer • Femio Hernandez – mixing assistant • Mike "Sack" Fasano – drum tech • Brian Gardner – mastering ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications==