blink-182 - One More Time… (October 20, 2023) • Page 187

Dance With Me is so perfect.

 

I need reasons to procrastinate at work, so I'm here for it.

 

Was Dance With Me not pushed to radio? It's the perfect pop rock song, I'm surprised I'm not seeing it climb the charts like OMT (the song) did.

 

Cutting a quarter of an album isn’t a great start to saying an album is good.

I would only keep a handful of songs. And even then, they just don’t sound that good. Given the context of when and how they were recorded, I get it. It’s not unlistenable or anything. But I think Buddh/Cheshire/DED/Neighborhoods are the clear bottom 4 releases for them by a massive margin.

 

I gotta do a couple things before I can dive in and rank them. But I’ll post it when I can.

 

Any of the Jerry Finn albums and Dude Ranch could be my favorite album of all time any random day. I love Cheshire a ton.

 

Might get a push later but OMT is doing really well right now and they probably want to let it ride out for a bit

 

In the end the only thing left will be the cockroaches and album rankings.

 

Haha I mean there's more than 3 I'd cut off of this one if you're using that barometer.

 

Cheshire Cat is amateur Dude Ranch. It's not as good as DR, but there's some great songs there, and it's a fun enough listen.

 

I woke up multiple times lastnight with "Turpentine" stuck in my head

 

They're quite literally unlistenable to me. The quality of audio, and the extremely elementary songwriting is just not appealing to me. Post-break up albums atleast sound like a professional band, and that's what's ultimately more appealing to me about them.

 

You clearly evaluate music in an entirely different way than me and most of this thread. Whatever.

 

Elementary how? I think the lyrics are better than any shit post breakup (and TOYPAJ), the riffs are dope, the melodies are catchy and I think they're messing around with song structure on tracks in more interesting ways than any other album aside from Untitled, I guess. People would be losing their shit if a song like "Cacophony" was on the new record.

 

Production on the first two are obviously ass. I personally think the rawness adds to some of the charm, but I can't argue against it. They kinda sound like shit (Buddha definitely does). But I think dismissing those two records means leaving out some essential, interesting blink songwriting that fell off as they got more polished.

 

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

 

Haha yeah, I'm talking about tracks and elements of the song instead of just saying "it sounds like shit". My apologies

 

Mmm seems like we're just not coming from the same place. An album like Neighborhoods has all the things that you just mentioned: catchy melodies, good riffs, and interesting songs. Cheshire Cat just sounds like some crappy garage band to me. I like pop music, though, so I am naturally going to like the more polished, refined stuff.

 

Buddha is essential if only because it has the better version of Toast & Bananas on it.

 

I mean, I think probably everybody on here would agree songs like Carousel, M+M’s, and Wasting Time are all great early blink songs. I think there’s a handful more that would be more debatable. But in the context of ranking albums, which is what spurred this discussion, a handful to a dozen songs between two albums really takes a lot out of these albums. I don’t think anyone is dismissing every song from them. Wait until I post the song ranking to see what songs people are dismissing or ranking super low.

 

I can't imagine how awesome it'd be to hear an album of these songs with Jerry Finn (or even Travis) production:

Carousel
M+Ms
Wasting Time
Cacophony
21Days
Fentoozler
Don't
Does My Breath Smell?
Peggy Sue
Toast and Bananas

Also, the fact that they decided to re-record "Strings" for Cheshire Cat and not "21 Days" will always hurt me.

 

OMT is still the #1 Alternative song in the country, DWM was not pushed

 

I mean, I didn’t say that. But go off. It’s typical.

See, one song does not make an album for me. This came off album rankings, so I rank the old albums lower because there are a lot of songs that aren’t good or are fine. We can talk about songs vs songs. That’s an entirely different aspect to discuss. I’m always going to rank albums higher if I actually like all or the vast majority of the songs.

 

I dunno, I think there are plenty of moments of pure "pop" songwriting on the early stuff. The production isn't there, sure, but they've always been a band to focus on melody first.

I will eventually go back to the post breakup albums and see if there's anything of worth that I haven't picked up on already. I gave them a shot when they released and only a handful of songs have stuck with me. "Ghost on the Dance Floor" was catchy. I feel like I remembered liking the MH song too. California has some gems. Cynical is good, I enjoy "Bored to Death". I don't remember much else.

 

"Strings" is a good song. Some of my favorite Mark lyrics on the verse.