blink-182 - NINE (2019)

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blink-182 - NINE (2019)

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blink-182 have announced their eighth studio album, which is confusingly called NINE. (Are they counting The Mark, Tom & Travis Show, or is this a bit?) The group posted the title to their social media today with the release date of September 20. Since May, the band has released three singles will be included in the album’s 15-song tracklist: “Blame It On My Youth,” “Generational Divide,” and most recently, “Happy Days.”

The album features the band’s current Tom-DeLonge-less lineup, which has been in place since 2015: Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker, and Matt Skiba (of Alkaline Trio fame). The group’s last album (and first with this lineup) was 2016’s California. blink-182 is in the middle of a North American tour with Lil Wayne, on which they are playing the entirety of their widely beloved breakthrough album Enema of the State in celebration of its 20th anniversary.

Lyrical subject matter on Nine is largely dark in tone, frequently focusing on self-doubt and isolation. Many conversations with their outside songwriters began with discussing their worst fears and building a song around it. Hoppus hoped to capture more honesty in his songwriting, and as such, much of Nine is inspired by his battle with depression. "My brain naturally goes in cycles to dark places and I have to actively combat that," he told Matt Allen of Kerrang!. "I'm not in a place right now where I want to write happy, up-tempo songs." He turned to exercise as a method of countering the negative thoughts, as well as spending more time outdoors and reading books. Hoppus noted to Allen that a compulsion to check his phone and scroll on Twitter impacted his daily thoughts:
“ "It's a really strange time where everyone is on heightened alert," he said. "I wake up and look at Twitter, I get angry, and I start my day. It's unhealthy to live with this level of anger. I have to consciously make an effort to not look at the news a lot of the time and just say, 'Every single day there's some new outrage and a lot of the time it's not worth my time.' […] The way everything is wired right now — between the news, and Twitter, and social media — everything spins so quickly that there's no time to take a breath."”

In addition, world events—the presidency of Donald Trump, border control policies, and the influx of mass shootings in the U.S.—were infused into Nine. Specifically, "Heaven" was written about the Thousand Oaks shooting that took place in November 2018. Other songs, such as "Black Rain", center on concepts of faith. Feldmann first sketched out the song as an uplifting embrace of salvation, but Skiba altered it to serve as a critique of organized religion. He had recently viewed the film Spotlight, and its investigation into the known abuses of children at the hands of Catholic Church instilled a rage in him. "I took John's hopeful, churchy idea and painted it black […] I have zero faith for the business of fear and war-mongering," he said. There are also multiple references throughout the album to using alcohol for self-medicative purposes. Hoppus noted to Allen that he and Skiba were not completely sober, and that the lyrical references capture his belief that "the world is looking for something to take the edge off, whether that be drinking or taking pills."