

As we all know, there’s nothing better The Kids These Days™ love more than swinging from the balls of bands who peaked when they were still in their diapers. Various 90’s and early 2000’s punk bands etc. have seen a surprising upturn in jockage by Tumblr kiddies and pop punk fans alike, but one band I always see absent from these types of people is The Offspring. This perplexes me beyond belief, since these guys are absolutely prime fodder for experiencing a surge in popularity. It’s no secret that me and Chad Sexington fucking love The Offspring so today I’m about to tell you just why these guys deserve your eternal respect and adoration.

Noodles rocking the “Silver fox Ben Stiller” look, while Dexter looks like he just stepped out of Guy Fieri’s wardrobe.

The Offspring pretty much personified fun jams when it came to the mid-90’s punk scene. I’d almost call them proto-Americanpiecore, if they weren’t way too good for that tag. Their first album is pretty crap to be honest, just your generic So-Cal hardcore with third rate Descendents riffs and the kind of musicianship that the average Punknews reader would cream themselves over. Thankfully they got a lot better around 1992 when they released their follow-up Ignition, which kinda sounds like what would happen if Punk In Drublic and Nevermind had a baby but that baby was like “Fuck scene politics, I just want to drink beer, smash bishes and hang out with my friends at a skate park.” Then the baby left home and made more money than his parents because he didn’t give a shit about integrity and wanted to get paid.

Dexter Holland probably looks back on his white guy dreads the same way Jason Butler will look back on his beard in 15 years.

Their breakthrough album was 1994’s Smash and it’s pretty great. Not as good as their later albums but still pretty sweet. It has a bunch of great osngs on it like “Self Esteem”, “Come Out and Play” and a crapton of other jams. Half the songs sound like Pennywise but with this ugly grunge production running underneath, which hasn’t aged well at all (think Seaweed/Jawbreaker, *barf*). However this was a necessary roadblock that the band had to overcome in order to go from “mediocre” to “actually pretty fucking good.” They did the opposite of most bands nowadays by going from making by-the-numbers hardcore to funny as fuck Bro Punk and then heading in a poppier direction as their career went on, which is hilarious from a modern perspective. More bands nowadays need to follow their lead instead of doing the opposite.

Too bad every EZ Dork under the sun didn’t know how to “keep ’em separated”, The Offspring saw the future and it was bleak

In ’95 they got sued by some bitchass claiming they ripped the riff of “Come Out And Play” off some shitty song by dinosaur punk band Agent Orange, when in reality they just used an extremely common scale that multiple bands have used over time. I mean srsly? A past-their-prime oldfag band suing a young, successful band because they managed to turn a profit? I guess they were just pissed because they couldn’t make a living out of playing crusty basements year after year while The Offspring were actually successful businessmen who knew how to cut ties with the scene and make hella bank in the process, lmao.

That fucking bassline at 2:47 is literal perfection, omg

While Smash and the follow-up Ixnay On The Hombre were quite amazing, it wouldn’t be until their 1998 album Americana which they truly achieved mainstream fame. This was the one that had “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)” on it plus a shitton of other solid pop jams. My favourite song on it was always “Walla Walla” because the combination of Dexter’s hilariously nasal voice and Noodle’s hard-hitting riffs always struck a chord with me. They just had the perfect chemistry together, with just the right amount of accessibility to attract a pop audience and enough heaviness to keep the Warped Tour crowd happy. The Offspring were at their best at striking a delicate balance between pop and punk and good god did they ever succeed in that regard.

this shit just makes me want to dig out my Sega Dreamcast and play some Crazy Taxi, srsly

In the mid-to-late 90’s, they were inescapable as far as mainstream Pop Punk bands were. Their songs were all over the teen movies of the day and they had multiple hits on MTV and radio. Along with Green Day, The Offspring pretty much shot punk into the mainstream around that time. I’d say they were one of the saving graces when it came to the cesspool that was So-Cal punk, inspiring countless bro-friendly bands to pick up guitars and kick out some sick jams as opposed to shaving their heads into mohawks and marrying Brody Dalle. Dexter Holland and Noodles probably smashed more bishes in the space of 4 years, than the members of Citizen probably ever will in their entire lives.

This is basically the Growing Pains video by Neck Deep, except it was actually made during the 90’s and is 100x less cringier

What I love about The Offspring was that they had a no-bullshit philosophy when it came to writing songs. Play some hard and fast riffs? No problem? Have a pop song in the middle of your punk album? You got it. Have a song talking about how much scene politics suck on your major label debut, while simultaneously parodying No Fun Clubbers? Absolutely (inb4 some stangry nerd tells me Jawbreaker did it first). When you think about it, The Offspring were pretty much NOFX just with less pseudo-political posturing and more songs about beer drinking and causing riots at football games (also no ska sections, lol). Personally my favourite album they ever put out was their 2000 album Conspiracy Of One Because that was pretty much the point where they’d grown to write great Pop Punk jams, while still keeping enough of the Skate Punk influences to satisfy their Smash-era fans. Of course their old fan base from the first two albums had more or less fucked off by this point, but those nerds don’t deserve to hear such amazing jams as “Want You Bad” or “One Fine Day.”

Even though this kind of sounds like Foo Fighters , it’s still better than whatever sadboi shit you probably jerk off 2 while browsing Tumblr in your spare time.

Hell, even their newer output isn’t all that bad. Days Go By was their way of basically saying “We’re all old and stuff now so here’s some shit that’ll piss off our fans just for the hell of it”. I non-ironically love the shit out of this song. Could you imagine if a band like The Story So Far or The Wonder Years released this song? They’d lose all their fans in the space of a night. The Offspring could’ve easily just remade Smash over and over again for their entire career but they didn’t, they chose to evolve their sound and I can totally respect that. They’re a bunch of solid dudes and I back them hard. The world needs more chill guys like them, instead of stangry dorks concerned with label politics or how many breakdowns + synth you can cram into a single song.

What do you think? Should The Offspring join the ranks of ‘tru punx’ luminaries or simply remain a relic of the 90’s? Did Guy Fieri totally get the idea for his haircut from Dexter Holland? Is “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy” the worst song ever written? Let us know in the comments below.