Every Blink-182 Album Ranked From Worst To Best
3. Enema Of The State - 1999
The first act of a game-changing trilogy came with the realisation that Blink-182 might be more than hilarious live performances and three-chord songs about girls and teenage jealousy. The traditional pop-punk anthems What's My Age Again? and All The Small Things have been fine-tuned to catchy, chart-grabbing perfection, and are still universal bangers over two decades later.
The Party Song, Dysentery Gary, and Mutt show that Blink was still entrenched in their classic adolescent humour, but the lyrics in Don't Leave Me and, in particular, Adam's Song were giving the hint that the boys were growing up, slowly but surely. Jerry Finn coming in to produce gave the group the chart-climbing slickness they needed to take over the world.
Of course, signing on with a big label and having Finn onboard Enema immediately caused a backlash from the punk community accusing the band of selling out. Well, 21 years later this album is five times platinum in America, and still an influence on generations of kids and pop-punk groups coming through. The Sex Pistols' John Lydon said back then that Blink was "an imitation of a comedy act". 2020 has been a strange year, but Blink-182 has yet to resort to appearing in butter adverts...