Ahead of the release of One More Time … Part-2, Blink-182 have released two new charging pop-punk songs, “All in My Head” and “No Fun.” The updated album will come out Sept. 6.
On “All in My Head,” Mark Hoppus sings about how hard touring life is staying in “lonely hotel rooms, cum stains on the couch.” But for as gross and sad as that reads, the song itself is pretty fun. Hoppus and Tom DeLonge trade vocals on the chorus: “I’m moving on, I’m better now, I sleep alone,” Hoppus sings, while DeLonge counters about how he’s not giving up despite feeling like he’s not good enough and how it hurts getting up. All that leads to an existential crisis, “I’m freaking out, is it all in my head?”
“No Fun” also balances Blink’s anxieties with upbeat, sing-along melodies. This time, their midlife crisis is of the Springsteen “Glory Days” variety as DeLonge wonders, “Whatever happened to us since the Nineties?/When punk was independent, and then it wasn’t.” And then there’s the internet and “simulated” marriages and a general feeling of ennui. “There’s no fun anymore,” he sings with a little contempt in his voice that still sounds like he’s maybe having fun. “Nothing to do, nothing to see.” Toward the end of the song, he sings, “Everything sucks when you’re swimming upstream.”
One More Time … Part-2 will feature six other new songs and come in a variety of formats, some intermingling the new songs with the original One More Time album (the classic lineup of the trio’s first album since 2011) and others with only the new tunes.
The band recently wrapped a North American tour in support of the album. But they’ll be back for a handful of dates in the fall.
Aaron Idelson
