On the 22nd February 2005 Blink 182’s website displayed a mysterious note on their website, a note which would bring forward many questions from heart-broken fans worldwide, the note read this;

“For over a decade, Blink-182 has toured, recorded and done non-stop promotion all while trying to balance relationships with family and friends.
“To that end, the band has decided to go on an indefinite hiatus to spend some time enjoying the fruits of their labors with their loved ones. While there is no set plan for the band to begin working together again, no one knows what tomorrow may bring.”

Days later this mysterious notice dissapeared, both Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus seemed to go into hiding and only Travis could confirm that Blink 182 had split, no details, no explanations just the news that one of the worlds most popular pop-punk bands was finished.

Then after months of nothing Tom Delonge stepped out of his hiding spot and revealed to the world what he described as ‘the best record for 20 years’ and ‘world changing’ and he revealed Angels and Airwaves, building up as much hype as he possibly could about the band both on myspace and through the Macbeth website the album realease date was widely anticipated, Tom did countless interviews about Angels and Airwaves, always making reasons for the end of Blink brief and vague and going on to talk about the amazing album he was going to release, of course Tom was accompanied by the rest of the band…who no one really knows the names of! But they included Offspring drummer Atom 2 other people! At the bands gigs he’d even cover Blink songs such as ‘I miss you’ and ‘down’ missing out the parts that high-school friend and former Blink 182 band mate Mark Hoppus would sing, however at the same time, the quieter, less up themselves members of Blink came forward…

Mark Hoppus who had started his own podcast yet was still being very quiet about the end of Blink and his new project began to do interviews with former Blink bandmate Travis, revealing Plus 44, a pop-punk band with a bit of electronic stuff going on. The pair were happy to talk about Blink and it’s ending but at the same time wanted to talk about the new band and the two new band mates ‘Craig Fairbaugh’ and ‘Shane Gallagher’. Mark and Travis explained how towards the end of Blink Tom had made demands about only wanting to record at his house, before getting his manager to tell the Band he had quit and changed his phone number so they couldn’t contact him, throwing over 11 years of friendship away leading Mark to later write the song ‘No, It isn’t with the lyrics ‘Please understand, this isn’t just goodbye, this is I can’t stand you’ aimed at Tom.

So why did I blog this random biography of Blink? Well 1 because I’ve been following them for a while, 2 - because it was 2 years yesterday since the break up and 3 - I felt like it.

The Better Of Two Evils…
Neither Plus 44 or Angels and Airwaves compare to Blink, there’s certainly aspects of Blink in each but they’re not as good. The Angels and Airwaves album ‘We don’t need to whisper’ got stunning reviews and has sold more than Plus 44’s ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’ however the Plus 44 album may have worse reviews but in my opinion is better, you don’t get a sense of it trying to hard or trying to write cliche’s and lyrics that make no sense, you get good lyrics but understandable ones and some good pop-punk songs!

So moral of the story… go buy Plus 44 ‘When Your Heart Stops Beating’ it’s cool!