Having embarked on dozens of massive worldwide tours - equaling thousands of concerts, Blink-182 is one of the most successful punk bands of all-time. Since their days as a garage band from the San Diego suburbs, their live shows have always been an immersive experience, with the band engaging with its fans on a level mostly alien compared to traditional stadium acts.
Blink shows are always a blast. Their concerts sell out as soon as they're announced, and fans can't wait to hear their favorite tunes, along with the fun-loving antics and classic banter between co-frontmen Mark Hoppus and Tom Delonge. Still, despite all the gigs, there's a healthy smattering of Blink tracks the band has never played live - no matter how loud (or how often) their fans yell out the song titles. Here's the 9 stand-outs favorites.
9 Strings
Albums: Buddah & Cheshire Cat
On one hand, it's surprising that "Strings" has never made it to the stage. The riffage is immediately catchy in that old school pop-punk way (think Asexuals or Big Drill Car). Plus, there's a great off-key warble of the song's title by Mark that would make for an epic shout-along for fans that most appreciate Blink's early years.
The band liked the tune so much that it made the cut for both Buddah, the band's demo (where Mark's warble is even more off-key), and Cheshire Cat, their official debut. Maybe it's the drumming that has kept it from being played live? It's great! The song's opening fill makes a strong case against original drummer Scott Raynor's rep as a lesser-than. Sure, he might not possess the talent of Travis Barker, but on "Strings", you'd think he did.
8 Snake Charmer
Album: Neighborhoods
"Snake Charmer" isn't actually on Neighborhoods proper - it's a cut from the Deluxe version of the album. Still, not only is it a great song, it also marks a huge leap forward in terms of the band embracing some unexpected influences.
This isn't the fun-loving Blink-182 of your teen years. If anything, the song somewhat abandons the band's familiar pop-punkisms in favor of a more goth-tinged post-punk sound akin to The Cure - and you know what? It works. You could almost hear Cure frontman Robert Smith moping out the song's lyrics on an alternate universe version of the track?
For the Blink fans who spent the band's first hiatus crate-digging back in the '80s, "Snake Charmer" is a true deep-cut gem. It hasn't been played live yet and that's a shame. The minute-long instrumental that opens the track could easily be stretched out as an awesome intro as the band takes the stage à la Wish-era Cure's famed 1993 concert film with its famed 10-minute version of the song "Tape".
7 Don't Mean Anything
Album: California
California is the first of two albums Blink-182 made after the band replaced Tom DeLonge with Alkaline Trio frontman Matt Skiba. It was also one of the band's most popular albums, debuting at number one in the US, UK, Canada, and beyond. Fans welcomed Skiba to the fold with open arms, showing up to Blink's subsequent tour in greater numbers than ever before.
Critically, the album was met with positive reviews, culminating in the band receiving a Grammy nomination - a surprising outcome, considering how difficult it is for bands to survive such a reformation without a crucial member of the band.
Blink's rebirth gave them a second life in the studio, resulting in the new lineup coming out of the sessions for California with a staggering 28 new songs - a healthy number of which were collaboratively written by the entire band. With a bounty like that, it's no wonder that fifteen of those tracks have yet to be performed live - and with Skiba out of the band and DeLonge back, the changes to those songs written in Tom's absentia are practically nonexistent.
"Don't Mean Anything" would have been an obvious contender for a single, but for whatever reasons that didn't happen.
Combing elements of "Dammit" and "Adam's Song", "Don't Mean Anything" would have been an obvious contender for a single, but for whatever reasons that didn't happen. The track was regulated to California's bonus disc and has never been played live. Why? Who knows? But the lyrics here cut deep and almost seem to reference the death and mourning of one's parents. Maybe it's too personal of a song to sing in front of the portion of the crowd that only wants to hear tracks from Dude Ranch and Enema Of The State?
6 Kaleidoscope
Album: Neighborhoods
Almost half of Neighborhoods has yet to be played live. This has less to do with the quality of the band's sixth album and more to do with Blink concerts having a surplus of hits that fans need to hear to satiate their ticket prices. Plus the fact that initial reception to the record was decidedly mixed.
Neighborhoods is Blink's dark horse in more ways than one. It's both a reunion album and a bookend for the band. A fractured relationship within the band led to an 8-year "indefinite hiatus," which was then prolonged by personal tragedies: longtime producer Jerry Finn's unexpected death in 2008 and Travis Barker's near-death in a plane crash only one month later.
Still, at the time of its release, "Kaleidoscope" felt like a true Hoppus/DeLonge collaboration. It came at a time when personal tensions in the band were running high and their future seemed dire. But not only did all three band members contribute to writing the track (as they did with the whole album), Mark and Tom also use the song to trade off vocals, which is something that never fails to excite old school Blink fans. But what exactly does the song's refrain of "Stop banging away at my kaleidoscope" supposed to mean? Mark explains:
"I woke up one morning with the line 'Stop banging away at my kaleidoscope, stop draining all the water out of my sink' and I wanted to build that into a song. I ended up changing the line but the mentality behind it is kind of being a slacker in 2011. Kinda the 20s and 30s malaise that is America right now."
Neighborhoods was not a lazy effort, nor was "Kaleidoscope" - a stellar track that still demands a spot on the band's set-list.
5 Last Train Home
Album: California
The second disc of California is shortchanged when it comes to songs from the Skiba-era that were performed live - and "Last Train Home" might be the most criminally underrated song in the bunch. Skiba and Hoppus trade vocals against a mournful, yet hopeful backbeat.
The song's title is bellowed out by Matt in full-on Dillinger Four-style, while the lyric "The only time I feel alive is when I find something I would die for..." helps showcase the songs decidedly 3am feeling. Epic in both scope and execution, "Last Train Home" is one of the more beautiful creations of Blink's second life but also of the band's entire career.
4 First Time
Album: Nine
Nine is the second album the band made with Matt Skiba - and like California before it, a healthy surplus of tracks from the record have never been played live. "First Time" is the lead-off track from Nine, so it's a bit of surprise that while the band had marked it as good enough to kick off their second collaboration together, it wasn't ever taken to the stage.
It's a simple tune, but it's all quick hooks and changes. The highlight? Skiba's backup vocals, culminating in his banshee yell of "Yeah, yeah" in the chorus - it's a total spine-chilling, fist-pumping moment that would absolutely kill if played live.
While Skiba's duration with the band eventually came to an end after Nine, his time in Blink created some of the band's most memorable music. Most fans would embrace a Hoppus, DeLonge, Barker, and Skiba line-up... Is that likely to happen? No, but imagine Tom singing a verse on "First Time" or harmonizing with Matt on those "Yeah, yeah" parts? It would make an already great song even better.
3 This Is Home
Album: Neighborhoods
While Neighborhoods is surely Blink-182's darkest album, it's also full of life, energy, and hooks galore. "This Is Home" is no exception. It's a quick, catchy tune - and like most of the Tom-sung tracks on the album, it has an almost goth rock influence running through its icy post-punk veins.
Like Weezer's Pinkerton before it, the rep of Blink's "dark" album has continued to grow and it's now deservedly seen as one of the band's best.
The guitar lead here is straight out of the Siouxsie & The Banshees school of earworms, except the riff is filtered through the 182-machine, then layered with some surprisingly retro synth sounds. Maybe it's not exactly what Blink's audience expected at the time, but its tracks like "This Is Home" which have made some fans reassess their initial reaction to Neighborhoods. Like Weezer's Pinkerton before it, the rep of Blink's "dark" album has continued to grow and it's now deservedly seen as one of the band's best.
2 Shut Up
Album: Take Off Your Pants And Jacket
"Shut Up" has a rep of being a low-key classic in Blink's oeuvre. Not only is the tune one of Travis Barker's best (and most complex) moments on Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, but lyrically, the song wears its catharsis on its worn-out sleeve. The intro is straight-up emo, sounding almost as if it could have come out of Jawbreaker's seminal Dear You album - but once Mark kicks off the lyrics with an initial expletive, the song becomes Blink's from there on out.
Sung from the perspective of a teenager fed up with the abuse he's experiencing whilst living under the thumb of an unstable household, "Shut Up" rings true for anyone who has ever lived through such domestic dysfunction... And perhaps for the person who wrote it. Hoppus elaborated on the song in a 2001 tour program:
"Throughout life, people will try to control you, tell you how you should live, what you should think, how you should act. This is my message to those people."
Nowadays, Mark has changed his tune, stating that he thinks the lyrics are lazy and that he regrets even writing the song in the first place. Aren't the song's lyrics supposed to reflect the teenage mindset of its main character? They seem perfectly in line with a teenager's response to such a desperate situation. Mark disagrees, which makes the chances of "Shut Up" being played live as just about nil.
1 Emo
Album: Dude Ranch
Dude Ranch was such a smash record that you'd think every song off of it would have been played live by now, but "Emo" is the lone holdout. Its absence in Blink's set certainly isn't due to quality issues - it's one of the most loved cuts on the album, sandwiched between two perennial favorites: "Apple Shampoo" and "Josie". So why hasn't "Emo" been played live?
No one knows. At first glance of the song's title, you'd think the boys from 182 were making fun of the then-burgeoning emo scene of the '90s, but the song plays it straight - it really is an emotional track. Maybe not literally "emo" in its sound, but the song itself does trade in a rather deep emotional well throughout its 2 minute and 50 second run time.
Maybe that's it? Hoppus's lyrics seem rather personal here and the refrain of "She's better off sleeping on the floor" suggests that his narrator is bearing witness to some kind of abusive relationship without being able to do anything to help improve the situation. A heavy theme in comparison to most of Blink's fun-loving early years. But if there was ever a song to dust off and make the fans go wild for the reunited DeLonge and Hoppus lineup, it's "Emo": the duo's harmonies on the chorus are as classic as it gets
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