10 Legendary Bands That Were Actually Side Projects
4. Box Car Racer
No one was really anticipating that Blink-182 was going to be heading for a brick wall at the turn of the ‘00s. Although songs like First Date and All the Small Things had lit up the rock charts in the past few years, Tom DeLonge was already starting to want out of the traditional pop punk formula that made them so big to begin with. Before he got into aliens and love on Angels and Airwaves though, he scratched his post hardcore itch with Box Car Racer.
Make no mistake, this is still Tom DeLonge, and having Travis Barker behind the kit on these songs does make it feel like a mainline Blink project. The one thing that separates it from the usual formula is the tone of the record. Since Blink were known as this happy go lucky pop punk act, these lyrics are a lot more introspective and a bit dark in places, like the inner angst being pushed to 10 on I Feel So and bringing Mark Hoppus in for a guest verse on Elevator, which seems to have a few opinions about the recent 9/11 attacks that had cast a shadow over the music landscape in the past few years.
Though this may have been a good pallete cleanser, this was the beginning of the end for Blink’s happy days, getting even darker on their self titled record before deciding to go on indefinite hiatus for nearly a decade. Tom was going to say what was on his mind though, and this was the beginning of pop punk starting to grow up a little bit.