Bored To Death

Album: California (2016)
Charted: 85
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Songfacts®:

  • Alkaline Trio guitarist and vocalist Matt Skiba joined Mark Hoppus and drummer Travis Barker after original guitarist and vocalist Tom DeLonge departed Blink-182 in 2015. "Bored" was Skiba's first single with Blink-182, and the band's first single to not feature DeLonge.

    Skiba and Hoppus share the vocals on this song. "From my point of view, it was sort of a response to Mark's call in the first verse of us traversing a relationship and kind of navigating through when things get real murky," Skiba explained to ET Online of his verse. "It's easier to say you're bored, or to be angry, than it is to be sad. To me, that's what that verse and that song represents."
  • Speaking on Los Angeles' KROQ's The Kevin & Bean Show, drummer Travis Barker said this was the first song the group recorded together when they hit the studio in early January 2016 with producer John Feldmann (Good Charlotte, 5 Days of Summer). "I think it was a really great first representation of what the band sounds like," he said.
  • The original plan to release "Bored" had to be aborted when blink-182 found out that someone had leaked the lyric video. "I found out about it because we had just finished rehearsal and I literally picked up my phone to check my messages there were all these alerts saying 'I love the new Blink song,'" said Hoppus.
  • The song was released as the lead single from California on April 27, 2016. It took the #1 spot on Billboard's Alternative Songs chart, twelve years after Blink-182 previously topped the tally in 2004 with their hit "I Miss You."

    Feldmann recalled: "The bridge is what I think made it turn into the single, when Mark came up with that nursery-rhyme bridge section, melodically and lyrically. I knew it was special but it wasn't until we had the record done... songs like 'Sober' and 'She's Out Of Her Mind,' those songs might be more classically "singles" but this song just feels like a unique, different, exciting [single.] When I listen to KROQ and it comes on, it just feels good."
  • John Feldmann recalled to Fuse TV: "My idea for the song was very much, 'let's throw everything and the kitchen sink at it.' Let's do everything I can think of that reminds me of classic Blink: the guitar riffs, the kind of hip-hop/drum and bass songs, the half-time choruses like in 'Stay Together for the Kids,' I had all these ideas and we threw them into one song with a classic Mark Hoppus lyric."
  • The song's music video was directed by Rob Soucy. It follows a disenchanted teenager fantasizing about the girl of his dreams while stuck in class at his high school. Among his daydreams is rocking out at a Blink-182 concert with her. The clip marked the first appearance of Matt Skiba in a Blink music video.

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