Have you ever realised that a song you love and have listened to over and over again, doesn’t actually have the lyrics you thought it did?
Sometimes you can listen to a song hundred times before realising what one lyric actually says, and it feels like you’ve like discovered the song all over again!
On the other hand, there are those songs that you know word-for-word and will sing along to it without actually knowing that the lyrics mean.
In this blog post I will discuss some confusing, misunderstood or misheard lyrics from 3 songs by Blink-182.
All of these are some of my all-time favourite Blink songs, and yet there are several lyrics that I only discovered YEARS later actually said something different to what I thought.
So maybe you’ll learn something about these songs too.
3. What’s My Age Again – Get the feeling right
This entry isn’t a misunderstood lyrics, but rather a lyric that a LOT of people have been singing wrong for years!
We all know the stellar intro to the song What’s My Age Again?, right?
‘I took her out, it was a Friday night,
What’s My Age Again?, Blink 182
I walk alone, to get the feeling right’
Right? Well, that’s what me and my friends used to sing any time the song came on anyway.
But when you think about it, that lyric doesn’t even make sense! Why would walking alone help to get the feeling right?
Well thats because it isn’t the right lyric. The actual lyrics make far more sense:
‘I took her out, it was a Friday night
What’s My Age Again?, Blink 182
I wore cologne, to get the feeling right’
Now, you may think that is a wildly dumb way to mishear the lyrics, and lets face it, you’re right!
But I am telling you that a HUGE number of people misheard it this way!
Mark Hoppus finally set the record straight in 2019 on Twitter, though it seems he was unaware that people were even getting it wrong!
The response to this tweet from Millennial pop punk fans was intense!
So many people were admitting that they had been singing the song wrong for TWENTY YEARS!
2. Feeling this – Closing lines
This entry may just be me, but I always wondered about he last few lines of their song ‘Feeling This‘.
Feeling This is a song about sex and lust, but also about the emotional side of love, and has some surprisingly emotional and wistful lyrics.
The final section of the song has Mark Hoppus singing the wonderfully depressing lyrics, “Fate fell short this time, your smile fades in the summer”.
At the same time, Tom sings something in the background. It is quite and very difficult to discern.
It’s so quiet in fact, that most lyrics for the song don’t even include it.
But Tom is definitely also singing at the end.
I wondered what his lyrics were for years, and thankfully I wasn’t the only one, as this Reddit thread shows.
My favourite comment was saying they thought it was Tom singing abuot pee colour.
I don’t think anyone would put that past Tom Delonge.
However, thankfully, that’s not what the lyrics say. Instead it’s something equally sad, to fit with the rest of the song, tonally.
What Tom actually sings is:
“Are we alone do you feel it?
Feeling This, Blink 182
So lost and disillusioned.”
Blink 182 always had a very particular skill to make very silly songs about swearing, while also make emotional songs about lost love.
1. Josie – Sombrero, Vacation, UL and DHC
I have saved the song Josie for last because it just has so many references that I never understood.
As well as the fact that it is just my favourite Blink song and I like talking about it. I love it so much that at my wedding, we left the ceremony to the Vitamin String Quartet version of this song.
So, it is a fantastic song, and I sing along to it all the time. However, the song is absolutely chock-full of references that I have just never understood.
To be fair, that’s probably because these were lyrics written by 20-somethings in California while I was a pre-teen in England: Their references weren’t always going to land a bullseye with me.
So let’s take these references one by one and explain them.
Sombrero
Okay, so this lyric is pretty obvious to what it means from context:
“She brings me Mexican food from Sombrero just because.”
Josie, Blink 182
So, Sombrero is an American Mexican fast food restaurant. I get that bit.
But being English, I have never heard of it. I had questions.
- What exactly is the Sombrero restaurant?
- Is it a popular franchise?
- Is there a reference or joke associated that I’m missing?
It turns out that ‘Sombrero Mexican Food’ is a chain restaurant that is very popular in San Diego.
It has 13 stores, with other locations in LA and El Centro.
But reportedly, the specific location that the band was singing about is: 11040 Rancho Carmel Dr, San Diego, CA, 92128
This was the local branch to the band at the time and they frequented it… well, frequently.
Now I’ll admit, when I found out that Sombrero was a run-of-the-mill Mexican fast food restaurant, in the same vein as Taco Bel or Del taco, I was a bit of a let down.
I suppose the English version of the lyric would be:
“She brings me a Big Mac Meal from McDonalds, just because”
But let’s face it: to a lovestruck teenager, thats the most romantic thing in the world!
Vacation
This is another lyric in the category of ‘you can get from context what this is but thats not good enough’.
“I show up at 3AM,
Josie, Blink 182
She’s still up watching Vacation”
So, obviously, Vacation seems to be a television show or film.
But if so, which one? My guess was National Lampoons Vacation maybe?
I have never heard anyone else call it that, but the only movie just called Vacation was from 2015, which I don’t think is what they were singing about, unless they have a time machine.
But that’s silly, sounds about as crazy as aliens, right? Oh, wait…
UL and DHC
And finally we get to what I think is the most confusing, misheard and misunderstood lyric in the song.
“And my girlfriend
Josie, Blink 182
Likes UL and DHC”
I don’t think I was alone here – I always thought he sings ‘THC’ here and it was actually a drugs reference about marijuana.
It turns out that this is quite simple references to two bands: Unwritten Law and Dance Hall Crashers.
Unwritten law are also a Californian punk band who formed at a similar time to Blink 182. Though the bands may have been friends, the frontman of Unwritten law, Wade Youman, certainly isn’t the biggest fan of Tom Delonge and his interest of the paranormal.
Dance Hall Crashers are slightly older than the other two bands, forming in 1989, and was a ska punk band originally formed by Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman, between their older band, Operation Ivy, and their future band, Rancid.
Fun fact: the song title, ‘Josie’, was the name of a dog.
The dog Josie was owned by Elyse Rogers, vocalist of Dance Hall Crashers, and also mark hoppus’ girlfriend at the time.
Wrap Up
Blink 182 are one of my favourite bands of all time, as well as millions of other peoples.
And the band has released hundreds of songs over their career, so it makes sense that some of their lyrics are going to confuse some people sometimes.
But the important thing is that you like the songs enough to sing the lyrics at the top of your lungs, even when you aren’t really sure what the lyrics are.
