Blink 182- “Josie”
From the album Dude Ranch

If I had written about music in the late ’90s, I would have filled up a lot of entries on Blink 182. In that era of grossly manufactured boy bands, they were interesting not for being an antidote to the trend but for being a type of boy band all their own. Sure, they were more potty-mouthed and musically accomplished; but to the casual observer of “TRL,” they were so convincing in their doe-eyed adolescent pandering that it was hard to tell they were supposed to be spoofing the Nicks and Justins of the marketplace. They even played to certain types: the fun-loving goofball, the more tortured artiste goofball, and the enigmatic silent one.

While their image appealed to a lot of the same impulses as the boy bands, however, their music lasts for reasons that O-Town’s does not. Besides the seminal “Dammit,” their best song is probably “Josie.”

For one thing, it offers a sampling of the band’s signature elements. This was before Travis Barker, the most technically proficient member, had joined (he was still with the egregiously overrated Aquabats), but it features the start-stop ferocity that he would later explore and make his own. It also uses the dual singer format that drove them their raucous, relentless choruses.

But the song doesn’t even stand out for its musical virtues. The biggest knock pop music had at the time was that it was impersonal and manufactured. Swedish tunesmiths were crafting confections out of cliches and glittering generalities. There are countless bands sort of like Blink 182, but there are none exactly like them, and that’s because of the details in the songwriting. Anyone who has read bad love poetry knows that it’s bad because it could apply to anyone. “Josie” cannot. The exalted subject doesn’t just bring home Mexican food. She brings it home from the SoCal staple Sombrero’s. She doesn’t stay up until three a.m. watching a silly movie. She watches Vacation. She does doting girlfriend things like driving when her man is too drunk to do it himself, and she doesn’t mind that her paramour is “lacking in the bulge” (because in the late ’90s, bragging about not having a big penis was the new having a big penis). This is clearly a real woman, and those details bring her alive. Much like the Judd Apatow films of a decade later, that tender authenticity offsets the group’s more sophomoric impulses and makes them sweet. I would have pinned all of their pictures on my wall, but what can I say? None of them had frosted tips.