The Californian hardcore punk band NOFX actually announced in September that they would disband in 2023. In December 2022, one last record is to follow with “Double Album”. Now the band has released a new song that was originally intended for a completely different band: according to singer and bassist Fat Mike, blink-182 basically wanted to record it.
The song comes from after blink 182 co-founder Tom DeLonge’s sacking, who returned to the band in October 2022. Meanwhile, Alkaline Trio singer Matt Skiba filled in for DeLonge. And Fatt Mike, whose real name is Michael John Burkett, was sleeping on Skiba’s sofa.
Fat Mike told “spin”on how the song came about: “I said, ‘Hey, listen to this.’ I played the song and thought, ‘That would be a great song for Blink-182.’ [Matt] worked with me on the text – a part was already finished. That was the first time we wrote together. He has [den Song] then [Blink-182] shown, they took him in.”
In fact, blink-182 drummer Travis Barker spoke of the track in a 2015 interview. “We have like four or five songs right now that I’m really, really happy with,” he told theNME”. “There is a track called ‘Pubk Rock Cliché’ that I love the most at the moment. It’s about friends of ours and their relationships.”
As Fat Mike explains, the song was to be the first single from the blink 182 album California (2016). However, when Skiba told the rest of the band who wrote the song, they scrapped it. “It really pissed me off because I thought this was going to be my first radio hit,” says Fat Mike. He was satisfied with the role of ghostwriter. “But I could understand that they didn’t want it to come out and someone said, ‘Oh, you had to get Fat Mike to write a song for you guys.’
“Double Album” is the follow-up to the “Single Album” released by NOFX in 2021. Blink-182 also recorded the LP “Nine” with Skiba in 2019. Tom DeLonge will be heard again on the announced new album.