Mark Hoppus reveals his favourite Blink-182 song
Every 2000s kid has pieces of Blink-182’s music tattooed on their brain. As much as the band might have been called sophomoric by many when they were starting out, the songs from Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge hit on something that sounded like pure teenage adolescence, capturing both the light and the dark side of teen life. After nearly three decades of mayhem, Hoppus took to social media to discuss what he considers Blink’s greatest material.
When streaming on Twitch, Hoppus made brackets for what he thought were the best Blink-182 songs, from hits like ‘All The Small Things’ to some sleeper tracks like ‘Reckless Abandon’. As much as albums like Enema of The State may have laid the groundwork for what Blink would become, Hoppus’ choice for the best song they ever made went to ‘Feeling This’ from their self-titled record.
Released in 2003, Blink’s self-titled record was a drastic change in style from what they had usually created. Gone were all the joke songs, and in their place were angsty tracks about love and tunes that toyed with different genres like post-punk and new wave. As an exercise to see how their songwriting could work, the band had the basic tracks for the song when DeLonge and Hoppus decided to write both of their verses without talking to the other.
When they came through, they realised they had both written about sex, albeit not in the same tone. While DeLonge’s take on the lyrics is carnal and decidedly forceful, Hoppus’ verses are a lot more subdued and affectionate. Since the record deals with both sides of romance, using this as the first song and single welcomes listeners into the world of the record, especially towards the end, where Hoppus and DeLonge layer their voices on top of each other before it all crashes down.
After picking ‘Feeling This’ as his favourite song, Hoppus mentioned it being the culmination of everything the band were about, telling NME, “It’s the apex of blink-182. The best of all of us. It was different and new and (in my opinion) groundbreaking”. The band let their muse follow them wherever it led throughout the rest of the record, making songs with an alternative edge like ‘Obvious’ and ‘Easy Target’ and getting Robert Smith from The Cure to guest on the song ‘All of This’.
All of the experimentation did have an expiration date, with DeLonge falling out with the rest of the band after wanting to play a different style of music. After going on a long hiatus, the band returned in 2011 for the album Neighborhoods, only for the plans to fall through again and DeLonge to be replaced with Alkaline Trio’s Matt Skiba.
Towards the end of last year, though, DeLonge had seemed to bury the hatchet with his old bandmates and released the single ‘Edging’, which will be a part of their latest album set for release this year. Hoppus might be looking to capture that old Blink spirit on this new record, but ‘Feeling This’ still marks the moment he and DeLonge were functioning at their collaborative zenith.
