#5 - blink-182 - Built This Pool
No, really. #5 is blink-182. Remember how I said everyone knows 3 Doors Down? You could say the same for blink. In fact, I'd hope that more people knew about them before all of the drama happened. If you don't know the story - blink-182 went on hiatus back in '05 because guitarist Tom DeLonge and bassist Mark Hoppus essentially hated each other. There's no use beating around the bush on that one; the two couldn't get along and make music together, so they branched out and worked on their own semi-successful side projects. In 2011 they released Neighborhoods, which was a fairly good album for the amount of friction that existed between the 3 members of the band. They had planned a follow up album but the animosity dragged on until 2015 when DeLonge was fired from the band and replaced with an equally successful punk-rocker in Matt Skiba from Alkaline Trio. The trio quickly put together California, a brilliant throwback to their older more punky roots. The album is one of my favorites from the year and it shot up to #1 on the Billboard 200 as well as the US Rock and Alternative rock charts as well as landing at #1 in Canada and the UK.
The first single released was titled "Bored to Death", which is a brilliant track that sounds like it was pulled off of Enema of the State. Hearing Skiba's voice ringing through the 2nd verse will definitely throw you off at first, but he plays really well off of Hoppus. The best song for me that Skiba sings mainly on is "Los Angeles", but the album is chock full of great tracks. "No Future", "Kings of the Weekend", "Rabbit Hole"... I could go on. Travis Barker's drumming is brilliant, the writing dynamic is phenomenal, and it honestly sounds like what blink-182 should sound like.
So yeah. "Built This Pool'. Have you heard it? Well, it's 16 seconds long.
Yup. 16 seconds of a song. There was a fierce internal debate on whether I should include a song that shord in the countdown, or whether I should use it as part of the yearly double. There's actually 2 amusing short songs on the album, the second titled "Brohemian Rhapsody", which weighs in at a comparatively bulky 30 seconds. Both songs have 1 line. The line for our #5 is "I wanna see some naked dudes, that's why I built this pool".
Yes, that's it. It starts, it sings, it's over. That's really it. And how does a song like that end up in our Top 20? Probably because it was hilariously awesome and I literally played it every day after the album dropped. The lyric video for the song (that's hilarious guys) has over 1.6 million plays, and equally amusingly they also released a 10 hour loop of it. I'm actually going to attach that video, because quite honestly you need to listen to the song over and over again. You really do. Everything about it is everything you want it to be. My friend Josh and I even started using the phrase "Why I build this pool" to tack on to reasons why we were doing things. It is what 2016 should have been. Thank you, blink-182.
Title:Built This Pool
Artist:blink-182
Album: California
Previous #5s
2015: August Burns Red - Identity
2014: Chvrches - The Mother We Share
2013: Born of Osiris - M∆chine
2012: The Shins - Simple Song
2011: Cold - The Break
2010: Matt and Kim - Cameras
2009: Michael Bublé - Just Haven't Met You Yet
Okay, I laughed.
ReplyDelete