blink-182's Mark Hoppus says music genres are dead

Mark Hoppus and Matt Skiba spoke to Pete Donaldson

Author: Scott ColothanPublished 5th Nov 2019
Last updated 5th Nov 2019

blink-182 bassist and co-vocalist Mark Hoppus has told Absolute Radio he believes the notion of music genre is dead.

Following the ‘back-to-basics’ approach of their blockbuster 2016 album ‘California’, blink-182 diversified their musical palate on their recently released eighth album ‘Nine’ and, alongside their trademark pop-punk sounds, they delved into electronic and hip-hop realms.

Preceding the release of ‘Nine’, blink also headed out on an epic 41-date co-headline North American arena tour with New Orleans rap extraordinaire Lil Wayne.

Appearing on Pete Donaldson’s evening show on Absolute Radio alongside co-lead vocalist and guitarist Matt Skiba, Pete asked Mark whether he believes that, with the advent of the MP3, genre isn’t as divisive anymore.

“Yeah, genre is dead,” Mark Hoppus said. “(Lil) Wayne put on such a great show. He toured with a rock band, they were all shredding musicians, all awesome people.

“His crew were awesome. You never know when you book a tour if you will get along with another band or if everything will be really cool and it just felt like home.”

Commenting on the difficulties blink-182 had recording ‘Nine’, Mark said: “We started off and we wrote a handful of songs but we weren’t really planning on writing a record yet.

“It was just ‘Oh, we’re off a tour and we have some time, let’s get into the studio and start throwing some ideas around.’ We came up with a handful of really great songs and then I kinda feel like we fell into a rut and we had conversations as a band that none of us were feeling a lot of the songs and we wanted to do something more ambitious, more far reaching and more genre pushing and completely different.

“We were very blessed on (July 2016’s) ‘California’. We came back from a very difficult time in blink (Tom DeLonge exited in 2015) and kind of went back to the roots of what blink-182, planting our flag ‘ok this is what blink-182 is in 2016, we’ll trip everything and go back to basics’.

“On that record we had Grammy nominations, it did great in the charts and we had number one singles, and it sold out tours and all kinds of stuff. We went to write this next record and we’re like ‘ok, let’s do the exact opposite of that. Let’s go and make strange music that still has the core of blink-182 but we’re going to pull from modern hip-hop, or we’re going to pull from EDM or Blast Beats, and we’re going to take all these weird influences and sub bases and stuff like this and make an avantgarde blink-182 record’.

“So, I think that’s what we set out to do - and we got to that point - but we had to take a lot of songs out behind the barn and put them down.”

Mark continued: “The great thing about being in blink is we can kind of do what we like and most of the time people give us the benefit of the doubt. And so we can have a song like ‘Generational Divide’, which is 50 seconds of straight punk rock, we can have a song like ‘No Heart to Speak Of’, which is kind of this weird post hardcore song, and then we can have songs like ‘Run Away’, which are more electronics based.”

Matt Skiba also revealed that recording with blink-182 is a much more liberating process than with his previous outfits.

“Most projects that I’ve been involved with there’s somebody that keeps their lyrics and ideas very near and dear and if you don’t like it they take it really personally. It’s common actually,” Matt said.

“It’s more uncommon if there’s a relationship like Mark and Travis (Barker) and I have – we’d never intentionally hurt each other’s feelings or whatever, we just want what’s best for the record. Mark and I are the first ones to say ‘this is an idea, it may be a good one or not. Who knows?’ I am blessed that I’m at a point of my life where I’ve got past that. I know Mark has too. You just want what’s going to work.”

Alongside talking about their own music, Mark and Matt also cherry-picked some of their favourite songs to be played on Pete’s show, including The Cars’ ‘Just What I Needed’, AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black’ and Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’.

Reflecting upon their final choice, The Beatles’ ‘Blackbird’, Mark said it was “incredible” the Fab Four achieved so much in a recording career of just seven years.

“All those iconic songs that changed rock and roll and music and popular culture forever is written by these four guys in a period of less than a decade,” Mark said. “It’s insane.”

blink-182 through the years:

1992

blink-182 were formed in 1992, when Tom DeLonge entered a Battle of the Bands competition at high school and met drummer Scott Raynor. After befriending a fellow musician named Kerry Key and his girlfriend Anne Hoppus, she then introduced her brother Mark - and the rest, as they say, is history.

blink-182's Mark Hoppus says music genres are dead
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Matt added: “Classical music aside, but rock music it seems like it comes from the simplest, most seemingly unromantic places. It’s just simple. I think that’s what the heart of rock and roll is.

“Even The Beatles, as genius and as groundbreaking as they were, it was four guys with instruments. Pretty simple. They just made something completely wild and new and changed music forever with it.”

blink-182's new album 'Nine' is out now.

You can listen to Hartlepool’s prodigal son, Pete Donaldson, from Monday to Thursday at 10pm on Absolute Radio.