The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

blink-182

[#] Enema of the State (1999)

Nobody likes you when you're 23, but it does move fifteen million units.

Reviewed September 6, 2020

(This is an album that was previously covered on the Rediscovering! Click the link in the table to read a wordier and possibly less accurate version of my feelings on this album.)

Enema of the State is officially the record where blink became a pop culture nuisance. The kids fucking loved it and the real punk people slammed it for being manufactured, mindless punk for mall kids. I find the notion ridiculous. It's always just bitterness that the thing you liked is now the thing that everyone likes, and that it's not the same anymore. Fuck 'em. Enema of the State is a populist punk record. From the word go, "Dumpweed" floors you with perhaps the best chorus to come out of punk in 1999, and the album's melodic charms and the band's speedy chops (this was Travis Barker's first blink record, taking their intensity to a whole new level) rarely flag for more than a track or two.

If the name and the porn star prostate exam on the cover didn't key you in, these guys aren't the model of maturity, as "What's My Age Again?" hilariously recounts through prank calls and getting distracted from sex by TV shows. It's not that blink don't have feelings—"Adam's Song" is nothing but a dress rehearsal for what darker moods they'd explore on their self-titled five years later—it's that it's usually best dealt with by girls and partying, or all else fails, a well-timed poop joke ("Dysentery Gary", anyone?). I think the curveballs are the most striking part, though: "Aliens Exist" comes out of nowhere with strikingly sober lyrics about an alien abduction, and given how worn the speedy, immature pop punk stuff gets past "All the Small Things", you become rather glad blink gave in more to their weird side on their later albums.

Essential:	"Dumpweed", "Don't Leave Me", "Aliens Exist"
Quintessential:	"What's My Age Again?"
Non-Essential:	"Anthem"
Rating:
Further listening:	Enema of the State's Rediscovering entry