Audio By Carbonatix
When Blink-182 started gaining popular velocity toward the end of the ’90s, the cheeky Southern California pop-punk trio didn’t necessarily seem like the scene’s top contenders for longevity. The band’s early material was unapologetically bratty. Vocalist-bassist Mark Hoppus and vocalist-guitarist Tom DeLonge favored nasal singing styles and a lyrical outlook firmly rooted in the shiftlessness of early adulthood. After all, the band’s first bona fide mainstream hit was a song called “What’s My Age Again,” from the band’s classily named third album, 1999’s Enema of the State.
Yet almost a decade and a half later (and following a four-year hiatus), Blink-182 remains the biggest-selling and most influential act to emerge from the late-’90s pop-punk stable. The band boasts more than 27 million albums sold to date, and its musical reverberations are felt in a new breed of summer festival stalwarts.
Reigning pop-punk act All Time Low’s frontman Alex Gaskarth has frequently and breathlessly cited a love of Blink-182 as the impetus for starting his own band, as have musicians in similarly fizzy acts such as Forever the Sickest Kids and the more indie-leaning Wavves. In fact, it seems like citing Blink-182 has become downright trendy.
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