2023 Albums #9

• Album: Take Off Your Pants and Jacket
• Artist: Blink-182
• Year: 2001
• Spotify link

I absolutely love Anthem Part Two, for two reasons. It’s a great guitar riff, both to listen to and to play; and it’s the intro to one of the best punk pop albums of all time.

I was the perfect age for this, looking back. Newly teenage, completely ready for punk pop, songs about dating, and puerile humour. And I'd just started playing the guitar, so I got a book, an actual book, of the guitar tabs for the album, and played it for years. I picked up my guitar to try out the opening riff to Anthem Part Two and I can play it from memory, after over a decade of neglecting my guitar.

I did a sound production module in my Higher Music class at school, and chose to record Stay Together For the Kids for it. I must have heard this song thousands of times in intricate detail, listening to small sections over and over and over of both the original and my appalling cover of it. And I'll happily listen to it over and over again.

The same applies to the whole record. Whether it's the stupider songs like Happy Holidays You Bastard, or the hits like First Date and Rock Show, or the deep cuts like Give Me One Good Reason, I don't think there's one song without some formative memory for me.

Plus they're all just fucking great.