What our Music Says About Us. Suburban Americana Pop-Punk Edition.

Exploring the defining soundtracks of Blink-182 and Green Day's. From suburban angst, tragedy, and rebellion -- and why their music continues to be relevant today.

Nov 26, 2024

To discuss the lexicon of early 2000s American pop-punk, you have to discuss California-bred pop-punk. You have to discuss Green Day and Blink 182. Bands responsible for birthing two extreme ends of our Americana anthems: Green Day representing political, progressive power and Blink 182 being the chaos that comes of too-much testosterone with nowhere to go. 2023’s When We Were Young festival, a remake of the 2000’s Warped Tour, knew this — and they placed these conflicting generation-defining bands side-by-side as the key headliners.

The pop-punk anthems written by these legends came at the genesis of a growing opioid crisis for bored, suburbia-bound coming-of-age teens. We lived in a post 9/11 world to parents who we didn’t realize might have been just as bored as we were — caught in recession-addled stagnation and confused they managed to breed teens with this much unbridled angst.

How Music Festival’s Rank our Cultural Myths

A festival line-up is a ranking. When We Were Young likely based their lineup off a pure popularity contest of most monthly listens (Green Day was the closing act with 35 million monthly listeners on Spotify and Blink-182 being the penultimate act and clocking in at 20 million monthly listeners).

This ranking reflects more than monthly listeners — numbers mean something and, in this case, they represent which bands most powerfully captured and shaped the shared experiences of an entire generation. Agree with the values represented in the distribution of a bell curve or not, the power of the populous holds true.

Blink-182: The Court Jesters of Pop-Punk

Blink-182 is the mouthpiece for a generation of young skater punks. The ones with a degrading sense of humor that is sexist and foul. “The female orgasm is a myth,” cries lead singer Tom DeLonge before he sings to a crowd of 80,000. He’s consistently off-tempo, missing his cues as he seemingly asks the crowd to sing the lyrics simply because he’s forgotten them. Right when I want to write them all off, “Miss You” comes on, and I’m reminded of how I felt around that exact brand of skater punk as a 14 year-old-girl who felt more like an observer of the over-culture than a part of it herself.

Most of Blink-182’s lyrics scream that stagnant testosterone leads to immature and playful violence. But “I Miss You”, with lyrics like “I cannot sleep, I cannot dream tonight / I need somebody and always / This sick, strange darkness / Comes creeping on, so haunting every time,” gets to the soul of universal suburban stagnation. The way we laid in bed at night, whether fighting with our parents who may or may not have been alcoholics, whether poor in our trailer parks or perfectly middle class with all-white walls and family photos on the beach, often with the stale scent of weed in our hair while wondering — praying to know — what the fuck else might be out there.

Yes, Blink-182’s humanity does exist, you just have to be patient. And when you find it, don’t expect it to go much deeper — the only other layer you’ll find is self-deprecation exacerbated by the deep adoration of their one truly talented band member: Travis Barker. But this might just be the secret — approachable adoration, an honest depiction of chaotic, unbridled youth. An outlet. Fun just for the sake of fun without having to take itself too seriously. Blink-182 is an everyman’s music in no small part because of their achievable melodies and simple themes, but they know to idolize their heroes. Throughout the set, Mark and Tom either self-deprecate, take the piss out of each other, or idolize Travis. They mock him for having a big cock, having fucked your mother, and cover his eyes with a towel while he destroys complex, ten-minute solos that reach peaks of 230 bpm while lifted 20 feet mid-air — metaphorically and symbolically lifting him to the ranks above the others.

The Blink-182 adoration of Travis Barker (The band would famously write nursery-rhyme melodies than send them over to Barker, saying ”Travis, make it cool!”) gets to a deeper root of Blink-182’s mythology. There is a volatile but tribal quality to the pop-punk communities of the mid-2000s — ride-or-die with tragic break-ups along the way. Blink-182 did breakup. And Travis Barker, after almost dying in a plane crash and Mark almost dying from cancer, made them put their differences aside and once again choose the community of each other.

Too many of us millennial and Gen-X suburbanites broke up and then lost each other to drug addiction, suicide, and random acts of tragedy. Blink-182’s reunion is not just a story of a band putting aside their egos but a reflection of what so many of us now look back and long for — the lost opportunity at reconciliation, belonging, and one more shot to say, “Let's go, don't wait / This night's almost over / Forever and ever / Let's make this last forever”.

Green Day: Punk Rock Revolutionaries

If Blink-182 capitalized on the listlessness of lost Americana youth, Green Day tried to assemble the energy of a generation. Political outrage almost calls its listeners to formation through tight, well-organized beats — even their iconic quintessential punk rock opera, “American Idiot” is encased in meaning purely in its being an opera. The history of opera is innately political — in terms of funding, themes, and the propagandizing power of music.

When Green Day plays, the chords on the fender wake you up with reverb that hits bone deep. The consistent progressions act on your system like military orders to a community of sleeping freedom fighters. And Billie Joe Armstrong himself, dressed like a liberation-seeking dictatorial Beetlejuice, sings with the cut throat and unstoppable 2-hour veracity of a man who will stop at nothing.

Green Day uses their powers of persuasion and their music as a rallying cry in more than their lyrics. It’s in their stage presence. Whereas Tom Delonge did likely forget his own lyrics during Blink-182’s set, Billie Joe Armstrong did not miss a beat. In fact, his expectations were so high that he humiliated a kid he welcomed on stage who didn’t play the guitar well enough. He tried to make up for it by giving the kid a guitar, but the damage was already done — Billie Joe made it clear that nothing gets in the way of his exacting standards. For 90-minutes he barely took a breath but never missed a word in a catalogue that stemmed back two decades.

Yes, Green Day is musically dictatorial. The lyrics don’t give you rest and neither does Armstrong.

When Armstrong tells a crowd to jump, they jump. Not the way Jared Leto in 30 Seconds to Mars tries — Green Day somehow pulls the movement from your body. There is such precision and masterful timing and, sadly, a deeper resonance with his lyrics than ever. American Idiot comes on and suddenly the associations with Bush are replaced with Trump, the towers falling replaced with Israel and Palestine, and the school shootings, well, they remain the same.

Chaos & Conviction

Whether you were shaped by the jester-like, playful chaos of Blink-182 or the political operatic rage of Green Day, there’s no way to deny these extremes were, and perhaps continue to be, ways of emotionally navigating a world out of our control. Perhaps chaos and conviction can coexist. More importantly — maybe we need them to.

So next time that sick, strange darkness comes creeping on, leading you to wonder whether you are just another American Idiot destined to walk along the Boulevard of Broken Dreams, perhaps say fuck it and take a moment to enjoy All the Small Things.

And call the ones you love.