Songfacts®:

• Blink-182's previous single, "Dammit," found bass player Mark Hoppus pining for an ex-girlfriend who moved on with another guy. This time around, he's imagining his idea of the perfect girl. She's not based on anyone in particular, but "Josie" takes her name from a dog owned by Elyse Rogers of Dance Hall Crashers. The California ska-punk band is also referenced in the lyrics, alongside Poway punk rockers Unwritten Law (whose frontman, Scott Russo, also provided backing vocals on the track). Both bands toured with blink-182 and are among the fictional Josie's favorite groups: "And my girlfriend likes UL and DHC."
  
• The character Josie shows up again in the song "Online Songs" on their 2001 album Take Off Your Pants And Jacket. >>>

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• Another reference to the band's native San Diego is couched in one of Josie's winning qualities. Hoppus notes, "She brings me Mexican food from Sombrero just because." Sombrero Mexican Food is one of the band's favorite restaurants in San Diego and one of their regular haunts in their early days.
• The lyrics also reference the 1983 comedy National Lampoon's Vacation, starring Chevy Chase. Hoppus knows he can show up at his girlfriend's house at any time of night, because she'll still be awake watching the movie.
• Two music videos were made. For their earlier singles, the band turned to directors Darren Doane and Ken Daurio to helm goofy clips that found the guys facing off against their girlfriends in a gunfight ("M+M's ") and causing chaos in a movie theater ("Dammit"). But they wanted to take a more serious approach for this tune and enlisted Jason Matzner and Brendan Lambe to shoot a clip based on Hoppus' concept, which involved the band performing on a sinking ocean liner. Because the budget wouldn't allow for such a lofty idea, they settled on performing in a basement under a burst pipe that floods the room. It was a terrible experience that ended with guitarist Tom DeLonge getting his head cut open on shrapnel. After seeing the footage, the band decided to scrap the clip and start over with their former directors.
  
  The second clip was shot at Westlake High School in Thousand Oaks, California, and starred Alyssa Milano as a hot cheerleader who catches Hoppus' eye. From Hoppus' perspective, it probably wasn't a fun shoot for the Charmed actress.
  
  "I felt really bad for her because she showed up on the set and it was just her and a bunch of perverted dudes who did nothing but stare at her breasts," he explained in the 2001 book Blink-182: Tales From Beneath Your Mom. "They couldn't even help themselves." But it couldn't have been all bad. At the end of the day, Milano allegedly handed him a note asking him to hang out, but he never took her up on the offer.
• The high school-themed video culminated in a massive food fight that had to be filmed in one take. "All those kids had to sit around all day outside in the summer and, at the end of the day, they were rewarded by letting them nail us with tons of food," Hoppus recalled.
• This is the last single featuring Scott Raynor, the band's original drummer. Hoppus and DeLonge kicked him out of the band in the spring of 1998 when his drinking started to affect their performances. He even had to record his drum parts on Dude Ranch from a wheelchair because a drunken stunt resulted in two broken heels. According to Raynor, he agreed to go to an in-patient rehab to deal with his issue but was fired anyway. He was replaced by Travis Barker of the ska-punk band The Aquabats.
• The single version was remixed by Tom Lord-Alge, who's known for his Grammy Award-winning work on Steve Winwood's Back In The High Life (1986) and Roll With It (1988) albums, as well as Santana's Supernatural (1999). The single peaked at #31 in Australia, where the band already had a big following thanks to their early tours in the country.