Blink-182 – “Happy Days”

Sophie McNeil

Blink-182 – “Happy Days”

Sophie McNeil

Blink-182 are busy. This summer, they’re heading out on a huge co-headlining tour with Lil Wayne. Every night on tour, they’ll play Enemy Of The State — the arguably classic, inarguably massive album that just turned 20 — in full every night. But they’ll have new songs to play, too. Last month, Blink shared two new songs. Today, they’ve got another one.

Blink-182’s three new songs all show different sides of the band. First, there was “Blame It On My Youth,” a misbegotten radio-rocker. Then, there was “Generational Divide,” a tuneful punk ripper that lasted less than a minute. And now they’ve followed those two singles up with “Happy Days,” a ringing and bittersweet nasal guitar-pop song that recalls the chiming almost-emo melodicism and sad-sack heart-on-sleeve displays of the band’s pretty-great 2003 self-titled album. Maybe you missed this version of the band. They missed you.

“Happy Days” is a good one! It’s heartfelt and catchy, and it’s got that great Travis Barker drum-thunder underneath those pinched, hopeless hooks. Like the other two Blink songs, it seems lyrically mired in bittersweet nostalgia, which is the type of thing you might be feeling if you were getting ready to play Enema Of The State every night on tour.

The new song is intended for Blink’s upcoming album, which the band spoke about today on Beats 1. Mark Hoppus says they’re using the working title Bojmir, which is “rim job” spelled backwards, and they’re pronouncing it with a silent “j.” Per Barker, “It sounds like some cool sparkling water. It sounds boujee.” They also discussed using the title Pretty Nuts at one point. The new album will contain a collaboration with Lil Uzi Vert and Pharrell, produced by the Neptunes. Barker says they’re just going to keep releasing music until they decide they have an album: “I see it a lot in the stuff that I work on outside of Blink. People are just putting out songs, they put out singles, and that’s kind of even how we’re approaching this album. There’s not really a cutoff point. It’s just a matter of what makes the album, but we’re going to continue writing and just have a library of songs so we can just keep releasing music.”

Listen to “Happy Days” below.

“Happy Days” is out now on the streaming services.

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