The singles – Blame It On My Youth, Happy Days, Generational Divide, Darkside, I Really Wish I Hated You – are still my least favourite songs, but in the context of the album they actually work better than I imagined. ![]() Blink left many fans feeling disappointed with a cringey music video for their single Darkside With NINE though, while it’s not ‘traditionally Blink’ by any means, Hoppus, Skiba and Barker have all offered their own influences in every song and they have gelled together well to produce something original and exciting. With Neighborhoods too, the clear distinction between ‘Tom songs’ and ‘Mark songs’ perhaps exposed the tensions in the band and left me feeling like I wasn’t listening to a Blink record. With California, Blink’s last album and first with Matt Skiba, I didn’t feel excited. ![]() I feel like NINE is an album that could win over new fans as well old. I’ve been proven wrong and feel proud as a longtime fan of the band for what they have achieved with this album. Despite standing at 15 songs long, NINE flows really well and leaves me wanting to listen to the album again and again. I have now listened to NINE a few times and I can safely say that it is a fantastic album. To my astonishment the reactions were…really positive! I couldn’t believe it! Was this Blink’s plan all along? Were they trying to throw us off by releasing the worst songs from the album as singles, before unleashing killer tracks with the release of the album? NINE was leaked a week before the official release, and while I managed to refrain from listening to the album itself I couldn’t resist reading the reactions. Blink-182 have been touring with Lil Wayne this summer, causing some controversy amongst fans To add salt to the wound for Blink, founding member and fan favourite Tom Delonge released two fantastic singles with Angels and Airwaves, which were both critically favoured by fans. In all honesty, I didn’t have high hopes for NINE. Over the summer we were also treated to a mashup of ‘What’s My Age Again?’ and Lil Wayne’s ‘A Milli’, which unsurprisingly didn’t work well a corny music video for Darkside involving school kids doing a dance routine from the Fortnite video games bright neon artwork for the album and a string of very average singles. There has to be respect for both artists for agreeing to tour together despite the inevitable backlash and raised eyebrows they received, but it just seemed like an odd choice and perhaps another example of how Blink was attempting to please the masses. In parallel to the release of BIOMY, Blink announced a co-headline summer tour with rapper Lil Wayne. ![]() ![]() With BIOMY, they went straight up pop, and the production made it sound lazy. Blink have always been a pop band, but at least their punk rock roots have always shone through on previous albums given Blink a bit of an edge. I don’t actually think BIOMY is a bad song, but the overproduction, especially on the drums, was an indication of the lazy, generic pop direction the band were going in. The first single to be released from NINE was Blame It On My Youth. Over the last few months though being a fan of Blink-182 has felt like supporting a football team fighting to avoid the relegation zone. Blink-182 is one of my favourite bands – always has been and most probably always will be. You stick with them through the highs and lows and you never give up on them. Having a favourite band is like supporting a football team.
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