Every Blink-182 Album Ranked From Worst To Best
They are part of pop-punk's Mount Rushmore - but how do their albums stack up against each other?
It feels as though blink-182 (from here on out the 'blink' will be capitalised, the need for grammatical correctness has overwhelmed me) has gone from snot-nosed pop-punk kids to elder statesmen of the scene overnight. Over the past quarter of a century(?!), they have amassed a back-catalogue almost as impressive as their collection of dick jokes or their fans' array of Tom Delonge impressions. You try singing I Miss You without doing the voice.
A contentious hiatus, questionable reunion, and an acrimonious breakup still haven't stopped the Blink machine. Like the best artists of times gone by - think Linkin Park (RIP Chester) or Bring Me The Horizon for recent examples - Blink tweaked and changed their sound down the years to stay as relevant as they could when pop-punk music started to be shunned and sniggered at in the early 2010s.
The jokes about bowel movements and incest are (thankfully) gone as the band are now in their mid-40s, but Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker, and newest member Matt Skiba aren't finished yet with the charming pop riffs and deep, torn lyrics that have become a staple of the group in the second half of their career.
10. The Mark, Tom And Travis Show - 2000
A bonus entry for those of you who enjoy nice round numbers on their lists. Blink's live album from the turn of the millennium is a microcosm of their charisma and chemistry - particularly between Mark Hoppus and Tom Delonge. The way the two play off each other throughout every live show, spinning into completely childish and irrelevant, yet hilarious, tangents between songs makes this a live album that's actually worth listening to.
The songs themselves are played at a slightly higher tempo, with the co-frontmen switching up their intonations on certain lines. Listening to it back after seeing the band in person, The Mark, Tom And Travis Show takes you back to that time in a heartbeat, and not many records can lay that claim.
There are some sketchy moments listening to this album in 2020, not least the closing track: Shut Up And Play A Song, which is just a collection of Tom and Mark's more outrageous moments from their 1999 tour. On the whole, this album is cemented in the collective memory of a generation; it exemplifies the kinda-rebellious teenage mood of the mid-2000s while showing how Tom Delonge had come into his own as a guitarist.