Not Quite Gone, A Punk Band Is Coming Back

PROPOSITION: No punk band of the 1990s has been more influential than Blink-182.

No, not even Green Day.

Blink-182’s pop breakthrough arrived in 1999, with its third album, the quintuple platinum “Enema of the State,” which took punk’s already playful core and gave it a shiny, accessible polish. Its hits were plenty: ecstatic, goofy numbers about teenage uselessness, with a smattering of tender introspection. It was among the catchiest music of the time, which would have been enough.

But the group’s members — Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, Travis Barker — happily turned themselves into video stars at a time when MTV could still cement a band’s image. Amid the boy bands and teen pop of the era Blink-182 was a gaggle of pranksters, savvy enough to use the visual tricks of the popular kids to their own ends, transposing the heartthrob model onto the outsiders. Fame doesn’t discriminate based on origin, though: soon the group was as famous as those it was parodying.

That gloss, and the lack of shame about it, instantly set Blink-182 apart from the other crossover punk of the era. “When Green Day came out, they were very rebellious, there was a lot of angst in their songs,” Mr. DeLonge said in a phone interview. “It was very attractive to me and a lot of people, but I couldn’t relate to them, they weren’t dudes I was like. When Blink came along, we were very similar to a lot of kids in suburbia: They’re running around naked, they’re getting drunk, they’ve got skateboards, they’ve got blue hair. They’re very sure they’re not going where their parents went. We really were the common suburbanite.”