Artist: Blink 182
Album: Take Off Your Pants and Jacket
Named after a pun on male masturbation (“take off your pants and jack it”), Blink’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket was the first punk album to make it to the top of the Billboard 200. After reaching mainstream success with Enema of the State (another pun), and releasing hit singles such as “What’s My Age Again” and “All the Small Things,” Take Off Your Pants and Jacket became a defining record for teen angst and adolescent hell. Tracks like “Story of A Lonely Guy” and “Stay Together for the Kids” keep things serious, while “The Rock Show” and “First Date” carry us through the awkward and confusing world of dating and young love, and “Happy Holidays, You Bastard” gives us 42 seconds of penis jokes. A catalyst in the ‘teenage dirtbag’ era, this was probably the album that you blasted from your portable CD player after your mom refused to let you go to Warped Tour. As Tom DeLonge so humbly said in their stick-it-to-The-Man track “Anthem Part Two,” ‘If we’re fucked up you’re to blame.’