NOTEWRTHY: blink-182’s Return

Welcome back to Notewrthy, the weekly music blog.

Today, we’re going to talk about the recent return of legendary punk rock band blink-182, my take on this and what the future probably holds for them.

On Instagram earlier this week, the band made some huge announcements. Firstly, they are releasing a new album soon, with the lead single for that album, “EDGING,” coming out before this post goes live, so definitely go check that out. Secondly, they announced a new tour to go along with the album release, and the dates for the shows are up on their website: Blink182.com. Their Chicago show is on May 6th of next year, and will be at the United Center. Along with the tour, it was also announced that they will be headlining the When We Were Young festival along side Green Day, along with many, many other artists from the era.

But, perhaps, the biggest news to come from this post was that former member and co-founder Tom DeLonge has rejoined the band! After DeLonge left the band in 2015, many fans felt that the music the band had released wasn’t of the same quality as before his departure. And frankly, I would have to agree. Even though I didn’t become a fan of them until a few years after this happened, there is a massive difference between my ranking of Enema of the State (1999) and California (2016), but that’s a topic for another post. Either way, I have strong feelings that this album will redeem some of the more recent releases. Given the band’s somewhat of a habit of members leaving and/or the band taking massive hiatuses, it remains to be seen how long the band will stay reunited.

In my opinion, blink-182 needs to really show that they still have what it takes to be at the forefront of their scene. While the band’s 2019 release NINE had some gems in the track list, it wasn’t their best work. However, the album was a step up from their aforementioned 2016 album, so hopefully, the trend continues, and this album is even better than the last.

Honestly, this album might make or break their relevance in the modern era of punk music. New artists are releasing stuff all the time now, and these guys aren’t getting any younger. If this album isn’t at least better than NINE, it’s going to seem as though DeLonge rejoining and the release of this new album was nothing more than a publicity stunt and a desperate attempt of a once even more widely known band to stay relevant in the modern music scene. But even if this hypothetical scenario does come to pass, they probably won’t completely die out right away. Having been around for as long as they have, they command a massive amount of nostalgia which will inevitably bring people to buy their merch, listen to the album and go see the show. I doubt this will spell the end of their careers, but it may start to cast a light on the fact that these guys may need to put their instruments back into storage.