blink-182 - One More Time… (October 20, 2023) • Page 35

Remember when I said Jason isn’t saying enough about this album and it made me nervous? This exchange has settled those nerves

 

same

 

Yeah Greg and Tom are both phenomenal lyricists, and I like that their styles are completely different. And obviously Mr. B Fallon is top tier as well. This is why I think the Menzingers and Gaslight (including all of Brian's other stuff) really stand out from their peers.

 

OMT's music video is just so frikkin beautiful.

 

yeah Blood Records kills it. typically pretty expensive but worth it.

 

I just read the last 3 pages of this thread and I can't believe some of you folks are worried about the lyrics on a blink-182 record. "All the Small Things" is like one of the best rock singles of that decade and the most belt-along part is "late night, come home. work sucks, I know." Those aren't even sentences!

 

Not at all because it’s 100% correct

 

What?? You don’t like the lyrics:
I'm a punk rock kid, I came from hell with a curse
She tried to pray it away, so I fucked her in church

 

A 47 year old calling himself a kid makes me cringe so hard haha just write music that's appropriate for your age

 

Tom in Edging:

 

Dude…

 

Blink's next album needs to be just instrumental so we can never do this again

 

I don't see any difference in saying "why are you worried about the music on a blink record" instead. And then adding something in the vein of "this is just for fun, shut off your brain, they are not Beethoven". Lyrics are a major component of songs and some people clearly care - blink fans included.

The quality conversation leads nowhere because it always ends up with people using the weakest stuff as a caricature. I swear we could take any acclaimed artist and do the same.

Maybe if it becomes about trying to describe the issue it works better. I will leave the untitled lyrics out of discussion so it doesn't become a conversation of "dark = good" and "fun = bad". If we take a song like "What's My Age Again" there is a specificity and certain quirkiness to it. It's funny with an undercurrent of melancholy as simple as the lyrics are. Many Enema songs are that way.

Now, if you look at "Fell In Love" or "When We Were Young" it's just the most lazy and trite writing possible. Like, let's make a song about being drunk, having sex and falling in love. And all you will get is words literally saying "I was drunk, we had sex and fell in love". No subtlety, no life, not anything.

If they are no good or not better than "x", ok, whatever. But there's no denying these lyrics are different... Over the course of more than 150 songs, blink has different type of lyrics.

 

I'll deny they're that different and I've actually heard the songs!

 

This is never going to end

 

Lotta people gonna be eating crow when the band you fell in love with for stuff like:

Fuck this place, I lost the war
I hate you all, your mom's a whore
Where's my dog?
'Cause girls are such a drag

and

I wore cologne to get the feeling right
We started making out and she took off my pants

and

Some girls try too hard
And some girls try too hard to impress
With the way that they dress
With those things on their chests
And the things they suggest to me

are able to take another group of very dumb lines and make you sing along!

 

It's one of my favorite records of all-time and the lyrics in those 3 aren't bad to the point of detracting how much I love them. They work without shining.

But what's good about these? Or is it the real difference that JEW is viewed as a sensitive, introspective, serious band and blink not?

"Stay with me
You're the one I need
You make the hardest things seem easy"

"You can't save me this time
Hope comes from inside and I feel so low tonight"

"Can we take a ride?
Get out of this place while we still have time
You want to take a ride?"

"I can't say I was never wrong
But some blame rests on you
Work and play, they're never okay to mix the way we do

"We'll never be the same, never feel this way again
Never again. Just tonight? Okay"


Now I'll say: "Look! So shitty and clichéd. Reads like middle school poetry" to prove my point. "Oh, Jim has always been a shitty lyricist. Who cares? It's all the same. They should just go instrumental next time. Then people won't complain".

 

duuuuuddddeee....

 

Counter-argument. What's bad about them?

 

but ... none of those songs are shitty and cliche or read like middle school poetry though?

Like ... "Work" is a really well written pop song.

Don't think we're not serious
When's it ever not?
The love we make is give and it's take
I'm game to play along

All I can say
I shouldn't say
Can we take a ride?
Get out of this place while we still have time

All the best DJs are saving
Their slowest song for last
When the dance is through, it's me and you
Come on, would it really be so bad?

The things we think might be the same
But I won't fight for more (I won't fight for more)
It's just not me to wear it on my sleeve
Count on that for sure

Fucking rules.

 

Me seeing that post like

 

My favorite Tom Delonge moment during Warped Tour during a thunderstorm that rained it out:

"WE'RE ANGELS AND AIRWAVES. WE PLAY RAIN OR FUCKIN' SHINE!"

"... GOODNIGHT!" *walks off stage*

 

For me, those specifically are too plain. Reads like cheesy romantic dialogue or bad diary writing. It's not awful, it works in the songs but doesn't really add to them or gives much of a mental image. Same thing in a track like "Always", which has some of the weakest lines in Untitled.

Counter-counter-point: then what is bad about blink's? 'Cause I quoted some lyrics I consider amongst their strongest and there's no apparent reason to say that is clumsy but these JEW ones rule?

 

(Mostly the sexism, ableism, and homophobia.)

But what started this conversation was talking about songwriters as a whole, and their entire catalog of music. What Jim Adkins has in his catalog of songwriting is a mountain of things to go and pull from and point at. The "best" Blink lyrics are on one album (I'd argue there's better stuff on Dude Ranch, but alas) and they're still pretty forced and have some real clunkers on there, but the vast majority of their Mark/Tom songs are in a different category. Buddah, Cheshire, Enema, TOYPAJ make up the big chunk of their catalog, and they have some really great songs. With not great lyrics. And then there's the untitled album, which when held up against the other albums of that era ... Sing the Sorrow, As the Eternal Cowboy, Transatlantism, Full Collapse ... are just clearly not on the same level lyrically.

Again, they write really good songs! But it's not some crazy stretch to admit their lyrics are not great!