After I listened to “Feeling This,” the opening track on blink-182’s fifth and self-titled (or untitled) studio album blink-182, I had to do a quick Google search and figure out what effect was put on Travis Barker’s drums, leading me to begin to have an interest in music production and how music sounds are made for the first time. The drum sound is flanged, and while the band, which consists of Barker, Tom DeLonge, and Mark Hoppus, in 2003, when this record was released by Geffen Records, use digital computer technology to produce this type of sound. They opted to use two tape machines, creating the song in the “classic” way.  The album, recorded over ten months with distinguished pop-punk producer Jerry Finn, would be an experimental take on the staples of the band’s earlier work, mixing both “classic” recording methods, and the innovative digital techniques recently made available on standardized music software systems like Pro Tools. One More Time… is the ninth studio album by the original trio, released this year, and November 18th, 2023 also marks the 20th anniversary of the aforementioned blink-182. Out of their first run of albums, before a lengthy hiatus, this LP would be the band’s most critically acclaimed, with The Los Angeles Times regarding it as an “underrated masterwork” during their retrospective piece for the tenth anniversary in 2013. 

While 1999’s Enema of the State shot the band into the eye of storm of the mainstream, and 2001’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket presented a new batch of tracks to all of blink’s new fans that came along for the ride, complete with potty jokes and childish humor, blink-182 is when the three would take a more complex and matured approach with their songwriting and instrumentation. Without the stylistic liberties they would take, and the more downcast tone the songs would have, the genre of “emo” would not have the same “look” in the early 2000s that we all know and love, made even more huge by inspired bands like My Chemical Romance and Paramore. Arguably, the subculture of the stereotypical, almost gothic, “scene emo” would take root with this album, with jet black side-swept fringes, skinny jeans, and studded belts being worn by teenagers across America after the dark mood these songs would carry throughout the LP’s duration. The music video for the forever resonant “I Miss You,” the track when Tom DeLonge would utter the infamous words, “don’t waste your time on me, you’re already the voice inside my head,” is teeming with goth references to 1930s fashion and film styles, and takes place in a haunted house with ghosts milling around. This shift in spirit and disposition by a pop-punk band, highly juvenile in humor, would have an enormous effect on the TRL-fueled mainstream of the era, and that is this record’s legacy, as blink-182 advanced the genre further, opening the door for darker and more melodramatic punk-inspired records to sell millions, like Fall Out Boy’s From Under the Cork Tree and Panic! at the Disco’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, both released in 2005.

But, to get into the tracks offered on this fifth album by the household-name band, after “Feeling This,” the record continues with the second track being “Obvious,” one that reinforces to the listener that this go around for the three will be a tad bit more abrasive. The opening riff is blunt and brash, with DeLonge’s signature nasal voice ripping “I saw you again, I think you used me again.” Once Travis Barker’s furious drumming enters the formation, it is also clear this is still a bonafide blink-182 song, just with a twist. Once again, “I Miss You” is forever going to be a highlight off of this album, and it is because the trio is doing something they surprisingly do best: add in a somber ditty during the run of tracks, like they’ve done in the past with the downturned “Adam’s Song” being the seventh track on Enema of the State. 

Tom sings lead vocals on the majority of the verses on the album, with Mark Hoppus’s baritone voice echoing on the choruses, and when both of the pop-punk luminaries sing together on tracks, that is when blink-182 is at their best. This is most evident on songs “Down,” “Stockholm Syndrome,” and my personal favorite, “Asthenia.” While DeLonge would later exit the band after 2011’s Neighborhoods, a record that was plagued by underwhelming reviews and poor sales (as compared to their colossal amount of total sales during their first run of records before the hiatus) and Matt Skiba would hold down the fort in the position of lead guitarist and vocalist for a sum of years, many fans regard the original trio as being the version of the band they identify as being quintessentially “blink.” Therefore, this is why it was monumental when it was announced on October 11th, 2022, that Tom would be returning to the lineup. They then, of course, released One More Time… this year in 2023, making the arrival of the 20th anniversary of blink-182 have perfect timing. DeLonge and Hoppus, a match-made in pop-punk heaven, have now been singing their classic hits joyously together on world tours for the past seven months, since their live debut headlining Coachella. 

Robert Smith, superstar frontman of The Cure, appears on the thirteenth track, “All of This” if you count both the “Stockholm Syndrome Interlude” and “The Fallen Interlude” as the fifth and eighth tracks, respectively. This collaboration with the musician would be “an amazing experience, like a dream come true” for the band, as quoted by Hoppus. Smith’s feature encapsulates the gothic concept the record was aiming for, a more dramatized and experimental sound, that the trio, with Jerry Finn, took almost a year in the studio to create. The laborious production perhaps is what led the band to their breaking point, as they announced that indefinite hiatus they would go on to take in 2005, but in the process, they left a record that would influence a new generation of pop-punk bands that would spawn crowd hits that we all know and love like “I Write Sins Not Tragedies,” and “Misery Business.” blink-182 saw the eponymous trio of Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker wear their broken hearts on their sleeves and momentarily ditch the potty-mouthed humor to create a piece of mature and emotional pop-punk that would leave a lasting legacy twenty years later. This is marked in 2023 by annual festivals like When We Were Young banking on the indefinite reign of the subculture created in part, by the band, and One More Time… being the third album that would debut at number one on the Billboard 200 for blink-182.