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blink-182 Song Meanings


Mau5

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FEELING THIS:

Mark: This was the first song that we wrote for the record. The flange on Travis''s drums on the intro of the song was done the old school way, using two tape machines. When it came to writing the lyrics, Tom and I went into two different rooms, and he wrote the verses, and I wrote the choruses, without discussing the subject ahead of time. It turns out we both wrote about sex. Two different sides, the passionate, lustful side (verses) and the romantic side (choruses).

Tom: The chorus with me screaming was done in a 30 foot long living room with microphones that were 10 to 15 feet away me.

OBVIOUS:

Travis: That was a really dark song on the album, we were thinking Failure meets Led Zeppelin meets the Police. I love the verses in this song.

I MISS YOU:

Travis: This song is played with brushes and is the only loop on the record. The part in the first verse about Jack and Sally I dircted towards me and Shanna.

Tom: I'm a really big Cure fan, and one day I was listening to their song Love Cats, and I loved the idea of using a stand up bass guitar and jazz brushes. So what we ended up doing was writing a song with all acoustic.

VIOLENCE:

Tom: I thought of one thing in my head, a scenario of a bar, late at night when a pretty female walks into the building during a fast paced hardcore dance song. I thought of every guy in that room looking at her and lusting after her. Each one not paying attention to any detail present except her.

Mark: This song is a pairing of seemingly incompatible musical styles. I love the bridge. It takes the listener to such a different place very smooth and beautiful.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME:

Mark: The beginning of this song has letters that my Grandfather wrote to my Grandmother during World War Two. Joanne Whalley came into the studio and read them. The song itself is about paranoia. Being afraid of the outside world, convinced that people can hear your thoughts.

DOWN:

Mark: This is my favorite song on the record. Travis recorded the drums in a small room of the house, using an old 1950's microphone. The chorus drums were recorded in the main tracking room. Then he recorded the fills separately, with the tape machines sped up and super compressed, so when played back at normal speed they sound really deep and gigantic. The reverb on the vocals was created by playing them into a shower.

Tom: The lyrics I wrote on Down are about a picture I had in my head of a boy and a girl inside of a car while it's raining outside. So I pictured over and over rain falling on the windshields while this guy is saying and thinking these things about wanting to kiss her and make her stay.

THE FALLEN INTERLUDE:

Mark: Jacken rules. The sounds and ideas that he created are amazing. The vocal at the end is so honest. It really expresses a man in pain.

Travis: Reminds me of driving in a car, jaded. Jack is the shit. He came in and we gave him a beat to work with at the end of Down, and I told him to elaborate on it. He wrote cool melodies, guitar and bass. I came in and switched the beat to get into the track, and did some cool percussion. It's a cool chill song to listen to and just think.

GO:

Tom: This song deserves to be played loud.

ASTHENIA:

Tom: This song is about one thing only, an astronaut sitting in a space capsule about the size of a car, floating above the earth. He's contemplating of even coming back or not will make a difference on such a negative place. A song about the loss of hope. A term was coined for the breakdown of life in space and it is called Asthenia, the name of the track. At the beginning of the song are actual NASA transmittions.

Mark: One of the coolest sonds on the entire record is Tom's guitar in the intro, when the drums come in. We plugged hisguitar into a Leslie Cabinet, and the tube in it was dying, glowing purple. It mage a gorgeous, scratchy sound that really compliments the lost in space theme song.

ALWAYS:

Mark: This is a total 80's song. At the outro, there afe four bass guitars being played. A Fender Bass VI, a Fender Precision bass doing two different things, and a Roland Synth Bass, that sounds like a keyboard. One of the things I love best about this song is Travis's percussion, using the cabassa as an accent before the snare hit.

Travis: Always I was thinking Missing Persons, so we recorded everything super dry and 80s feeling. The cymbals are on top of eachother, with cool keyboards in the outro. There's a really fast tambourine in the choruses. I think anyone can love this song. It was a simple song.

EASY TARGET:

Tom: A friend of ours told a story of when he was young, and got asked to go to the prettiest girl in high schools house. He rode his bike as fast as he could to get there, and she and her friend jumped out of the balcony and sprayed him with a hose. He rode home wet, sad, and humiliated.

ALL OF THIS:

Mark: We are all huge fans of the Cure. Having Robert Smith collaborate on a track is a total dream come true for us. We recorded this song in a rather unconventional manner. Travis recorded the kick and snare together, then went back and overdubbed the high hat, then overdubbed the ride cymbal, then overdubbed the ribbon crasher. Tom went in and recorded the acoustic guitars and the electrics. I went in and recorded the bass, using a new discovery for this album, which is a 1963 Fender Bass VI. It is ecactly like a guitar, in that it has six strings, but is tuned an octave lower. It wasn't amplified. We plugged it directly into the board. Then Roger came in and added the keyboards. Tom sang the lead first two lines for the chorus, and then we sent the track to Robert over in England. He recorded his vocals there, and sent the track back to us. We added drum fills and harmonies and added mellotron. The song was recorded in 4 different studios on 2 different continents and is one of the best on the record.

HERE'S YOUR LETTER:

Mark: This song is about people's inability to communicate with one another and how words and explanations only confuse the issues.

I'M LOST WITHOUT YOU:

Travis: The keyboards in the beginning remind me of Pink Floyd or Failure. I think the choruses are really big and lyrically it's something everyone can relate to. We recorded two drum sets for the outro. One whole track, and then I played to the click. Then I played until I couldn't stop playing. It was something we always wanted to do, but never got around to.

Tom: The original idea for this song was to have the chorus be the verse and have there be no chorus, just gigantic, heavy guitars. We worked on this song for about 6 months and it kept just getting better and better, and stranger and stranger. This song is one that could only be fully realized when listened to with headphones. To hear the 50 or so tracks that were recorded on this song, you need a dim room and a somber mood. As the song ends, two drum sets play off of each other and take you to a different place, as does each of the verses that were recorded separately from each other. One of which was a 1960's effect by singing through a rotating speaker. It sounds like I'm underwater, but it's fucking cool. The feedback in the middle of the song was a one take art form of making the guitar sound really tweaked and ugly. I say art form because to make the guitar sound that way you constantly have to twist and turn like an acrobat on drugs.

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DUMPWEED

This song is about how nice it would be if girls could be trained like dogs. Girls are so much smarter than guys and can forsee the future as well as never forget the past. So that leaves the dog as the only thing men are smarter than. My dogs name is "Grey." (fun fact: Grey is a type of alien)

Tom

DON'T LEAVE ME

This song is about when a girl breaks up with you, and it sucks, and the whole time you know that it's your fault. You blew the whole thing, you idiot! It's all your fault, and you're helpless to fix your own mess. It's too late to do anything about it, the damage has been done. This is my favorite song on the album. The music is simple and I love the words and melody. Here's a cool little fact for you...the guitar swell just before the second chorus is not an actual swell at all. It is the digital mirror of the decaying guitar preceding it. I hope that makes sense.

Mark

ALIENS EXIST

This song is best represented on my sick and twisted UFO/alien page.

Tom

GOING AWAY TO COLLEGE

Valentine's Day, 1999. I got sick during the recording of the album, and was home in bed, ill. I was thinking about how bad it sucks when people are in love in high school, and end up having to go to different colleges, and I decided to write a song about it. This song was written on my bed in ten minutes. It was also written halfway through the recording of the album, so we had to go back up to Los Angeles to record the drums.

Mark

WHAT'S MY AGE AGAIN?

Mark wrote that song because Mark is 27, and he's usually rolling around on the floor naked and farting or something in front of a girl, and he'll be laughing. He'll think it's so funny. And she'll be like, "How old are you?" And that's totally why he wrote the song.

Tom

What can I say about this song? This song will always be like my special retarded child, as this was the track that really launched the record. It was originally titled "Peter Pan Complex," and has undergone a multitude of changes since its creation. In it's first draft, the mellow bridge in the middle of the song was twice as long, and, was supposed to have words. But I couldn't think of any that weren't shitty, so we shortened the whole thing, and took out the words. It turned out way better, and it really anchored the song. I love the way that my bass sounds on this one. The words to the last chorus of this song were written in the studio on the day I sang the song. Also, there is a third lost verse about me falling in love with a hermaphrodite.

Mark

DYSENTERY GARY

This is my way of writing a song about when a girl chooses not to like you but another guy. So when you have nothing better to say about the other guy, you just make fun of him.

Tom

ADAM'S SONG

This is probably the most serious song that Blink-182 has ever written, and definitely one of the best in my opinion. Travis's drumming is amazing, and I love the piano work that Roger did. This song is about me being lonely on tour, as well as this article that I read about a kid that killed himself and left a note for his family. Although it normally takes quite a while for us to lay down our vocals, I did this track in one take. Hey, there's a first time for everything. Also, I play the acoustic guitar in the beginning of the breakdown. I'm pretty cool, huh?

Mark

ALL THE SMALL THINGS

This is a love song for my girlfriend Jennifer. She actually left me roses at the top of the stairs while recording "Enema of the State," so I put it in the song. It was a nice thing that made me horny.

Tom

THE PARTY SONG

San Diego is a great place to live, but some of the chicks (and dudes) that go to college here can be pretty lame. This song is about them. I went to this party at SDSU on night and ended up meeting some people that thought they were super cool. I hate people who try to act cool. They should all die of gonorrhea and rot in hell. This song was the last one that we finished. In fact, the single for "What's My Age Again?" was played on KROQ in Los Angeles for the first time the day we mixed this track.

Mark

MUTT

My friend Benji Weatherly (surfer pretty good looking for all you chicks interested) lived with me for a year and I wrote this song for him, and about him for his part in Taylor Steels surf video. He has sex alot and word is it's not always with humans.

Tom

WENDY CLEAR

I wrote this song while we were on tour with MXPX. It's about having a crush on someone that you are not supposed to like. The title of this song comes from my boat "Wendy." On marine radios, when you are done with your transmission, you need to let the other boaters know that the channel is open for use. You state the name of your vessel, and that the channel is clear. Thus - "Wendy Clear."

Mark

ANTHEM

One time I told everyone at my highschool that my band was playing at my friends house. The only problem was his parents were coming home at 12:00pm. He got busted by the cops and a giant fight broke out at his house. I was such a dick, well anyway, this song is about that party.

Tom

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Feeling This by Mark

Feeling this deals about sex, both sides of sex. The passion of the moment when you feel completely lost, and the chorus is more on the romantic side of sex. It is about sex's duality.

Obvious by Mark

Obvious... Tom wrote that one, I don't really know what it deals about. It is, I think, of the exact moment when you realize a relationship with a girl is over, it won't work anymore.

Violence by Mark

It's the story of a girl which enters a bar and everybody is turning over and stare at her. This song is a lot more different from our first recordings. It is surely one of the best songs on the album. It starts with these hard drum beats which recals heart beats. It's some sort of mix between drumm& bass and punk rock.

Not Now by Mark

This song was wrote a long time ago, whilst on tour with Tom, it must've been in 2001, quite some time now. It's one of the most straihtforward songs of the album. There's this Hammond B-3 orgue in the choruses which sounds real cool. The orgue's speaker had a really wacky sound so, look forward to this on the choruses.

Here's Your Letter by Mark

It's a song from which I wrote the verses and Tom the choruses and which are from two different songs. I dont know... It really worked! Lyrics are about a letter you're writing to someong in order to tell him/ her it's over, that there's no way it can work anymore.

Go by Mark

Go is a really straight song and is one of my favorite tracks. It deals about domestic violence and it's a really powerful song. The tempo, the agressive guitars make it a real simple song, that you can listen to in a car, it is surely a good tune.

I'm lost withouth you (a.k.a. Afraid) by Tom

It is really complex to describe this song because it starts with loopings and all sorts of electronic ambiances. The first and a half minute, there's nothing but piano with my voice over. And then the song goes in the total opposite way and explodes with 11 different sorts of guitars, big crazy breaks. There are feedbacks, just like Radiohead's and then follows two drumms which play different rythms for 3 or 4 minutes. It is a really romantic song: " Are you afraid of being alone because I am. I'm lost without you" which repeats itself. It is a really trance and hypnotic song, so cool to listen to with headphones. There is no better way to apreciate it than to sit back and take your time in order to understand all these little things we've done for your ears.

Asthenia by Tom

This song starts with the transmission of our conversation when we land on the moon. It's really weird to hear this song talking to houston. There is orgue, you feel like in space. The whole song theme's about these two guys sitting in their spaceship, not bigger than a car, they're looking through the window and see the space, they can see the earth away. The idea is that they can die up there but that it's maybe worst getting back down on earth. "Let me die in space" Asthenia means the loss of all vital conditions.

Always by Tom

This is the song from the whole album which looks the most like blink's. But in the same time it is really different in the way it is really new-wave.We recorded each instrument with the idea of sounding exactly like in the start of the year 80's, just like "The Police" or "The Cars". It deals about separation but it is also the most romantic. The chorus says: "Let me hold you, touch you, feel you, always".

Stocholm Syndrome by Tom

Someone told me "Muse" had a song with the exact title. I don't even know who they are. Maybe I've heard them without knowing it, I'm not a fan. The song's begining is about this letter Mark's Grandfather sent during Worl War 2 to Mark's grandmother. We created this sad music around this letter, it talks about paranoia and death.You learn to live with that fear and it comes to miss you when she's gone.

Easy Target by Tom

Use Your Erection 1& 2 was a joke because we did not have a title for this song. It is a two part song about a pal which created himself an environment in order to protect him from that girl.The second part of Easy target is the song on which we plan on Robert Smith to sing on. It is the same music but played in a totally different way.

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These explanations used to be everywhere and on almost every Blink 182 fan site, but they were a bitch to track down now. I know there were a few more ones for Dude Ranch from various interviews. Like there was a huge explanation about Josie and how she didn't exist and Mark was lonely on the road, etc.

i remember when there was 100s of blink fan sites, with all the same information. lol.

i enjoyed reading those meanings again. its been awhile, reminded my why i liked blink so much.

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Feeling This's song meaning is perfection.  Their sexual experience didn't go the way they wanted it to, it was completely imperfect, but there's still something perfect about it that fate couldn't have predicted.  SDKJFGHKJSDFGH bless this thread.

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