Hearts All Gone?

A definitive ranking of blink-182's discography:

1. Dude Ranch

An obvious choice. Front-to-back it has easily the strongest songs and has a very good balance of jokiness to seriousness, which is good because that balance actually became what killed the band later. Bonus points for nostalgia tied to Damien and I listening to it after swim team practice in like grade 6.

2. Enema of the State

Enema of the State has a few of blink's best songs, including their best-ever "Going Away to College". But the second half of the album kind of runs together. Also, if I'm being real, I can't stand "Adam's Song". The production is super slick and the harmonies are pretty fuckin' real, but it does get a little over the top at times.

3. They Came to Conquer...Uranus

Look at me, being a pop-punk hipster and putting a 3-song EP third. When you compare the quality of the songs here with Cheshire Cat and Buddha, the difference in quality is astounding. While they still had good songs sprinkled through the early shit, this definitely represents the band becoming the blink-182 that everyone eventually grew to love.

4. Take Off Your Pants and Jackets

This album starts off super fucking strong, with four bangers in a row. Then you get to "Short Story of a Lonely Guy" and are reminded that this band, especially Tom, can write bad songs. The second half of this album straight up sucks, save for a few songs, but that is made up for by the tried and true blink pop-punk formula that makes "Everytime I Look for You" and "The Rock Show" great.

5. Cheshire Cat

blink was still an extremely raw band on this release and that shows as most of the songs really blow, however, "Carousel", "M+M's", "Peggy Sue", and "Wasting Time" all fucking rule and show the promise of what was to come.

6. Buddha

Same thing about Cheshire Cat, as they're mostly the same songs, but this only has "Carousel", which makes this subordinate to its successor.

7. Self-Titled

This album really sucks. They tried to make a "mature" album and it comes off as completely hacky and the lyrics fucking terrible. I hated it when it came out and a year or so ago I thought "You know what, maybe it's actually okay and I was just being young and dumb." and found that it was even worse than I remembered. "Always" is a banger though.

8. Neighborhoods

I'll be honest, I have only heard two songs off of this album and they both blew. I can only assume that the rest of the album is a less-inspired Self-Titled made when the band was ten years past being culturally relevant.

Sure got negative at the end there man!