Tag Archives: the offspring

#1195: The Offspring – She’s Got Issues

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So it’s come to this. The last song by The Offspring that I’ll ever write about on here. I don’t know if I’ve said, it’s been a long time since I’ve featured the band on the site, but The Offspring was one of my favourite bands at one point. A real starter group for me, I’m talking when I was about eight years old. 2003-ish. I was very obsessed with ‘Hit That’ at the time, which led me down a hole of watching their music videos on their website via Windows Media Player (pre-YouTube days, people), getting excited whenever they were showing on TV, and eventually getting their Greatest Hits compilation and Americana. Then it took five years for the band to release another album after Splinter, and my own personal hype for the group somewhat diminished in that time.

Some Offspring songs sounded much better then than they do now. ‘Least to me. ‘Pretty Fly’, ‘Why Don’t You Get a Job?’, ‘Original Prankster’… man, even ‘Hit That’ are just a few examples that I haven’t willingly listened to in a long, long time. But then there are others that I get a kick out of whenever, wherever. And ‘She’s Got Issues’ is one of them. The track was released as the fourth and final single from Americana, almost a year after the album’s initial release in 1998. And I think because people were so caught up in the three that came before and still are, I guess, to this day, ‘She’s Got Issues’ has flown under the radar for all this time. I think I saw the music video on MTV2 one day, featuring a young, pre-star Zooey Deschanel, and thought the song was all good. At whatever younger age I was, I assumed the singles that had the music videos were usually the best songs. So when I got Americana as a gift, I was immediately drawn to the track as a result.

There’s not much interpretation the listener has to do on their part while going through this one. It’s a very ’90s male take on a woman who, to be fair, may need some help in a professional way. But the way in which Dexter Holland tells the story is pretty funny. I think the listener is meant to feel sorry for the perspective from which the song’s told, but there’s definitely an asshole narrator element to the whole affair that I think levels the playing field. It’s a depiction of a relationship where the two involved are just as bad as each other. Though calling out an ex’s name when in bed is for sure a big red flag. Apart from the crunching riff and those whipping noises that alternate between the two speakers throughout, I think the main musical highlight is Holland’s vocal. He drily approaches the verses before belting out the “Yea-heah, YEAAA-HEAH”s in the louder choruses. As much as I try, I can’t replicate those without my voice completely breaking. But it’s always worth the effort.

My iPod #529: The Offspring – Hit That

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“Hit That” was the first single from The Offspring’s album Splinter, released in 2003. Some consider the album to be the beginning of the band’s downfall, others see it as their last great album before things went pear-shaped. I did want the album went it was first out because, at the age of eight, I thought “Hit That” was the best song around. And because I hardly ever saw its video on TV, I used to go to the band’s website and watch it endlessly.

To be honest the song hasn’t aged that well. It sounds like it was made for 2003, and that year only…. Maybe 2004 too. The keyboard line doesn’t have the same effect it did all those years ago. But nostalgia’s sake makes me listen to it. It does still get me singing along too.

Sleeping around with many people and not thinking about the consequences is the main subject of the track, and it differs from many other tracks on Splinter in that it is carried by slick bass groove rather than punk guitar chords. I’s not their best song, but don’t let that stop you from hearing it out.

My iPod #494: The Offspring – Have You Ever

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Is it right to say that The Offspring’s fifth album Americana is underrated? Granted it is one of the band’s most commercially successful pieces of work, but I feel that it wasn’t represented that well by the singles released from it. Especially “Pretty Fly” and “Why Don’t You Get a Job?“. A majority of people will only listen to the band for those two songs and never delve further into their material, missing out on what is – to put it crudely – some good shit.

After an introductory nine second skit, “Have You Ever” really begins the album with stabbing palm-muted power chords and crashing cymbals before a drum roll sets the track’s frantic tempo and singer Dexter Holland wails the first desperate lyrics: “Falling, I’m falling”.

The track is about feeling misunderstood, knowing that sometimes we have no control of our own lives, and generally feeling out of place at certain moments. The constant existential questioning is reinforced by the frenetic backdrop of guitars and drums until about halfway through when the whole song changes, the narrator becomes more confident, sees how this corrupt world really works and pledges to do something about it.

My iPod #466: The Offspring – Gotta Get Away

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Think it’s fair to say that “Gotta Get Away” is one of The Offspring’s most tracks in the band’s discography.* Found on what is considered to be their finest album Smash from 1994, the song was chosen to be released as the third and final single almost a year after Smash had been out. It wasn’t as commercially successful as the two preceding it, but it remains a popular song amongst many an Offspring fan. It’s just got this very intimidating and tough sound that you don’t find very often in other Offspring singles. The music video further emphasises this.

The introduction brings in each member one by one, firstly with Ron Welty’s hard-hitting tom-tom drum pattern followed by Greg K’s cool bassline and finally with Noodle’s high-end scratching guitar phrases. With a strike of the crash cymbals, all three members come together as one to really get things going and eventually lead into Dexter Holland’s trademark double-tracked vocals, singing about wanting to be anyone else but himself due to symptoms of strong paranoia.

Song’s mad. Despite its pessimistic subject matter there is something brutally confident about the music’s delivery…. It’s strange. But it does its job.

*26/08/20 – Clearly there’s an adjective missing from that sentence… I’ll let you fill that in.

My iPod #261: The Offspring – Defy You

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“Defy You” is a track The Offspring recorded for the movie “Orange County“* in 2001. The song was released after the band had released their most album “Conspiracy of One” the previous year, and so it was only available on its single release until 2005 when it appeared as the twelfth track on the band’s greatest hits compilation. It is also their last single featuring original drummer Ron Welty, who coincidentally is focused on a lot in the song’s video.

The track differs a lot in attitude compared to the band’s other singles. I had heard “Original Prankster”, “Hit That”, “Job” and obviously “Pretty Fly” which, when you look at the lyrics for those particular examples, are quite funny songs which aren’t really meant to be thought upon that much. But “Defy You’s” message of never giving up and standing up for what you believe was something that I did not expect and struck me when I first saw it on the TV. This was a serious Offspring single I was listening to.

I like their ‘jokey’ singles, but “Defy You” is one that does not pull any punches. There are no “uh-huh, uh-huhs” or references to popular culture – only a heavy performance and a great vocal by Dexter Holland. It is possibly the coolest track the band have ever done.