Tag Archives: song

My iPod #330: Does It Offend You, Yeah? – Epic Last Song

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I had a friend who like “Does If Offend You, Yeah?”. I don’t think he’d actually heard their songs before, he just liked the band’s name because of how confrontational and threatening it sounded. That phrase was actually chosen when the synth player and lead singer were watching The Office one day, and Ricky Gervais said it when they turned on the TV. Quite funny.

This was in 2007 when the group was considered to be one of the ‘next big things’ to come by NME. I didn’t know what to expect from the group because I had never their songs either. “We Are Rockstars” came out….. thought that was alright but it wasn’t anything amazing. NME made a big deal out of nothing, I feel. Never followed the group so much afterwards.

Still, my sister borrowed the album from a friend of hers just because she liked “We Are Rockstars”. I still haven’t listened to “You Have No Idea What You’re Getting Yourself Into” to this day. How can I talk about “Epic Last Song” if I didn’t bother to, you may ask. Well, it was released as a single. The video played on MTV2. I liked it. Here I am now.

If you weren’t able to guess, “Epic Last Song” is the final song from “You Have No Idea….” Whether it’s epic or not is for you to decide. It isn’t even the longest song on the album. But it is a very happy song, one about feeling lucky to have been in a relationship for a long time. And being surprised that they’ve stuck with you for that long.

My favourite part is the last minute or so when the singing finishes (not saying it’s bad), leaving the guitar and synthesizer playing in unison with some very heavy drums. Really hits you that it’s all gonna end soon at that point.

My iPod #8: Blink-182 – Adam’s Song

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Hey everybody, everybody hey.

The year was 2005. My mum was driving me to my 11+ tutors house. And the news came up on the radio….. that Blink-182 had just split up.

How did I feel? I don’t think I cared, I was only ten at the time. In fact, I wasn’t even listening at the time. I only heard something about Blink-182, and then ‘I Miss You’ started to play. It was only later that I realised, when the video for ‘Not Now’ started showing on MTV.

I had probably first heard Blink-182 when I was about four due to ‘All the Small Things’, but at the time I would have had no idea who it was by. And I think I liked ‘The Rock Show’ too…. but really I can’t remember. Let’s just say I had a vague idea of who they were.

I think the first video I ever sat down and watched on the TV was the one for ‘Always’. I liked that song, and the girl in it was hot too, so it was a win-win situation. I was probably nine.

But anyway, back to ‘Adam’s Song’.

The video for ‘Not Now’, as you may or may not know, is basically clips of all of their past music videos from ‘Dammit’ to ‘Always’ and miscellaneous footage of antics on tour.

Clips from the video for ‘Adam’s Song’ appear in the video, and I had never really watched Blink videos before. I knew they had a thing for being naked, but I wondered what else they had.

Back then, YouTube didn’t exist. I watched videos on this site Yahoo owned called ‘Launchcast’ or ‘UK Launch’ where you could customise your own radio based on your favourite bands and watch music videos for free. It was good shit. It’s gone now, but at the time I had never been on any other site like it.

‘Adam’s Song’ gives you a strong dose of mood whiplash if you’re listening to ‘Enema of the State’, the album the song is on.

Blink are known for really fast, and poppy punk rock songs with bass chords, brilliant drumming, and tag-team vocals between Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus. Especially by Tom DeLonge.

But here….. you basically have a song about suicide. Which isn’t cool. The song is cool. But suicide is not.

The video is pretty tame compared to other Blink videos too. There are no midgets playing instruments and there’s not an arse in sight. It’s a performance video with a few still-photo flashbacks, but it is a much more serious video.

Maybe that’s what made me like it. It’s not my favourite song of theirs, but it was quite different to anything that I had heard from them.

It’s all fine though, on the album it’s followed by ‘All the Small Things’, and in video chronology terms the video for ‘Man Overboard’ was released after this one. And that video is funny as shit!

Until next time.

Jamie.