blink-182’s classic 2001 album Take Off Your Pants and Jacket, celebrating its 25th anniversary this week with a Complex LA pop-up, is almost certainly the only No. 1 album in history to boast both vulnerable reflections on the lifelong impact of a broken home, and a cheekily delivered ode to incest.
The latter, a joke track aptly titled “When You Fucked Grandpa,” was originally written to feature Adolf Hitler as its subject, but we’ll get to that. TOYPAJ, one of several classic entries in blink’s catalog, also made history by becoming the first-ever punk album to open at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus, and Travis Barker would go on to follow the Jerry Finn-produced blockbuster in 2003 with what is arguably their magnum opus, an ambitiously constructed (and fittingly untitled) album that would ultimately serve as the bridge to subsequent blinkiverse-expanding projects like Angels & Airwaves and +44.
But the seeds to that expansion were already apparent on TOYPAJ, which built on the playbook for the shape of pop-punk to come first established by the trio on 1999’s Enema of the State.
Below, we take a closer look at the enduring legacy of TOYPAJ. For further celebration, be sure to visit the Complex LA pop-up. Just make sure to RSVP before you do.
blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket is the first No. 1 punk album
For some fans, TOYPAJ is positioned as the Terminator 2: Judgment Day to the band’s Terminator, i.e. 1999’s Enema of the State. The album shrewdly expands on many of EOTS’s themes while hinting at what each member of the band would explore at a deeper level in the years ahead, including on DeLonge and Barker’s one-off Box Car Racer project in 2002.
TOYPAJ was released in June of 2001 and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, becoming the first punk album to do so. Less than a year after its release, it was certified double-platinum by the RIAA.
DeLonge and Hoppus faced last-minute pressure to write Enema-sized hits, resulting in two classic songs
Pulling from their three distinct artistic voices, the band initially had roughly 12 songs demoed, which they played for their manager at the time, Rick DeVoe. A key part of TOYPAJ’s lore is that while this initial response to an earlier iteration of the album was positive, DeLonge and Hoppus were, more or less, urged to add some surefire hits. Fueled by a shared sense of frustration, the two did exactly that.
“‘You want a fucking single? I’ll write you the cheesiest, catchiest, throwaway fucking summertime single you’ve ever heard!’’ Hoppus would later recall thinking at the time. “I drove home, grabbed my guitar, sat on the floor, and wrote ‘The Rock Show’ in 10 minutes. Tom drove home, grabbed his guitar, and wrote ‘First Date.’”
The Southern California band trolled the label with joke songs
DeLonge and Hoppus’s penchant for often graphic, frequently hilarious stage banter is well-documented. This has also extended to their studio work, perhaps most notoriously on a trio of joke songs recorded during the TOYPAJ sessions that were ultimately spread across three different versions of the album’s initial CD release as bonus tracks.
As DeLonge later recalled, reps from the band’s label at the time, MCA, were trolled with two of those joke tracks, including “Fuck a Dog” and “When You Fucked Grandpa,” when they paid the band a visit to hear what they’d been working on. The latter, notably, was originally written with Hitler as its subject.
“I remember the label came down to hear the big follow-up and those were the only songs [bonus tracks ‘Fuck A Dog and ‘When You Fucked Grandpa’] we played them,” the Angels & Airwaves founder said. “Oh my God, they lost their minds. We had this song about fucking Hitler. We changed it to 'when you fucked grandpa’, but it originally was, ‘When you fucked Hitler, did he tell you that he loved you?’ They lost it.”
TOYPAJ includes the second entry in the band’s “Anthem” trilogy
EOTS closes with “Anthem,” a blink catalog highlight, and arguably the band’s thesis statement. Lyrically, the track starts as a reflection on the inherent difficulties of getting good and trashed while still under your parents’ thumbs, only to build toward a more defiant and existential stance exemplified by DeLonge repeatedly likening himself to a time bomb.
This theme continues on TOYPAJ opener “Anthem Part Two,” which finds our narrator expanding the sources of his all-consuming angst to include “corporate leaders” and “politicians,” making it clear in the chorus where he points the finger, like so:
“If we’re fucked up, you’re to blame”
It would take 22 years, but blink would later make the “Anthem” story a trilogy, opening their most recent studio album as of this writing—2023’s One More Time…—with “Anthem Part 3.” A considerably more empowered message is at the core of that track, with DeLonge declaring “I won’t fail” in the outro, a far cry from the “I time bomb” of the first “Anthem” entry.
“Fuck a Dog,” “When You Fucked Grandpa,” and other bonus songs didn’t officially hit streaming until this year
After years of fervent fan requests, and despite Hoppus himself at one point saying it would “never” happen, blink opted to commemorate the 25th anniversary of TOYPAJ by finally adding the album’s bonus tracks to streaming services. The 25th anniversary edition adds all six bonus tracks, originally only available on physical versions of the album, including: “Time to Break Up;” “Mother’s Day;” “What Went Wrong?;” “Fuck a Dog;” “Don’t Tell Me It’s Over;” and “When You Fucked Grandpa.”
blink-182’s Complex LA pop-up celebrates TOYPAJ anniversary, band’s legacy
blink’s Complex LA pop-up, fittingly, opened its doors on the 182nd day of the year. The pop-up, open through July 3, gives fans the chance to immersive themselves in a fully blinkified space, complete with exclusive merch in collaboration with Pleasures and more.
