I'm not going to allow myself to live like this.
Even if I have to just put on a happy face and get out there try and find what's good
in the world and good in myself.
I want to feel happy days.
Even though all this shit is inside my brain telling me like, “You're not good enough.
You're not okay.”
I'm going to go out there and I'm going to make my happy days for myself.
It was such an easy song to write.
I feel like we cheated.
The song itself is, for me, is really personal in its lyrics, but the actual writing of the
melodies and the writing of the parts and the recording felt really easy.
We got in the studio with a producer, Tim Pagnotta and a lyricist, Sam Hollander.
The song actually started off with a beat that Travis had written.
We played more guitar on it.
I played bass on it, Travis went in and recorded the drums.
We've sketched out the song, started writing lyrics and wrote the whole thing in pretty
much, I don't know, half a day, five hours or something.
And then Tim took it away, did some extra production stuff on it, brought it back.
It went really quickly and it was one of those songs that feels like you just have to get
out of your own way for it to happen.
And those tend to be the best ones.
This song is an inner dialog that I feel like I have with myself from time to time.
It's about the doubts that I have where I'm like, “Is this song good enough?
Is our band good enough?
Am I good enough?
Am I ever going to write another good song?” For myself as a songwriter
I wake up every day thinking, “I'm never going to write another good song.
I've said my best stuff.”
I pick up a guitar and I come up with an idea and I kind of go, “Oh.”
You know, it's a creative process for me.
It's like, “This sucks.
I want to quit.
Let's just keep going.
Let's see it through.
Oh wait, that's a cool idea.
Okay, this might be all right.
Oh, this is really cool.
Oh, this is awesome.”
And then I wake up the next day going, “Everything sucks.
I'm never going to write another good song.”
So the first verse is kind of about that process.
The second half of the first verse, I would say, is more introspective about sometimes
waking up and feeling lost in the world.
Being a father, I feel like it's difficult to raise a kid with optimism and hope and
positivity.
It's hard for kids today.
It's hard for people today.
It's hard for everybody with all the news and everything else is just, we're seeing
the worst of humanity right now.
And so to wake up everyday and go out there and try and be positive and make the world
a better place and put your head down and do the work.
I don’t know it feels lonely sometimes.
I think everybody feels lonely in the world right now.
And so this song is about growing up in the right now as well as how I felt when I was
growing up.
The pre-chorus little interlude before the chorus hits is like, “I know.
I know how you feel.
I know you don't know.
I don't know either.
Nobody knows what the way through is.”
I'm very, very blessed in my life that I get to have happy days.
My happy day quite often, which is get up in the morning, have breakfast with my wife
and son, get my son off to school, then go to the studio and make music with my friends,
be creative, do different stuff, be home in time for dinner with my family again and read
and watch TV and do normal stuff.
Or I get to be on tour and playing songs for people that are singing songs back to me and
hanging out with my friends.
It's awesome.
When I get depressed, I tend to shut down.
I don't talk a lot.
I kind of go into my own brain.
And when I find myself doing that, I have to consciously take myself out of that mindset
and go and talk to people and go out and I have to kind of make it happen.
But I don't know if I'm...like that's that line, I don't know if I'm ready to change.
I don't know how to get out of this spot.
And you have to just make it happen for yourself.
I mean I'm a grown man with a wife and kid and I still have times where I have to go,
“Okay, hang on a second.
You're not okay right now.”
When I get upset or depressed or lost, the thing that always helps me is music and that's
what I've always turned to.
I never had people that I really felt like I could talk with feelings about, but I always
listen to music and that's what always either, depending on which music I listen to, like
you know some really depressing Cure stuff would pull me further over the edge or you
know listening to some cool punk rock bands makes you want to go out and conquer the world.
Sometimes you feel like you're at your wit's end.
You're at the rock bottom.
Things are awful.
And that's the time when you really have to lean on whatever it is that gets you through
your hard times.
Friends or music or art and make it happen for yourself.
The ultimate message of the song is that there are happy days ahead, there are better times
ahead.
You need to see this through.
We're all in this together and we will get to this better place and you will get to this
better place.
When I was younger, I had no idea that I would ever play in a band that would headline amphitheaters
or be nominated for a Grammy or anything like this at all.
When I was in high school, the biggest dream that I ever had was playing a show that people
came to.
And when we started the band, our biggest dream ever was to sell out this tiny club
that we used to go to in San Diego and watch punk bands play.
It was called Soma.
I think it held 1200 people.
And I was like, “Imagine if we could play a show there and 1200 people came.”
And when that happened, I was like, “Oh, we made it.
This is it.
This the top of the mountain.
We're never...
You can't go any better than this.”
And somehow we have.
When you’re at your wits end.
When you're face down in the deep end.
Like every weekend is awful.
People don't notice when you're there are not.
People...
You kind of feel like you're a ghost in your own world.
Those moments where it's just dark.
I feel like we have chased a lot of our dreams.
I feel like we have been allowed, thankfully, to pursue music and pursue a bunch of different
ideas.
We've gotten so many chances with our band. You know?
We've had members come and leave, our band has broken up, we've had a new member come
in and people are still coming out to the shows and smiling and singing along.
And you know 25 years later, we're still touring and loving every second of it.
And it's awesome.
This song and our band is pretty much exactly what this song is about.
There are hard times, there are things...
When Blink broke up the first time, I felt so lost.
I was always Mark from Blink-182.
Mark from Blink.
“Hey, what's up?
I'm Mark from Blink-182.”
And then I was just Mark, this dude that used to play in a band.
I didn't know if our band was ever gonna play again.
I didn't know what was gonna going to happen.
And I felt all this lost identity.
But you know Travis and I put our heads down and love playing music and we've just kept
going and kept going and write music that we love and it's reacted and things get better.
Things go through cycles and here we are in 2019 with a new record coming out and it's
awesome.
The best thing about tour for our son is sleeping in the tour bus.
You have this little coffin of your world and you have your stuff plugged in.
And sometimes they have a little TV in there and you can shut the curtain and you hang
out there.
It’s like a really fucked up summer camp.