Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge and bassist Mark Hoppus share vocals on this heavy tune that revisits DeLonge's emotions about his parents' divorce. He was 18 when his mom and dad told him they were splitting up. He left the house to sit in his car and write this song.
Hoppus also had parents that divorced when he was a child. The
Enema Of The State single "
Adam's Song" recalls a moment when Hoppus was frightened by their arguing.
This is one of the songs on the album that indicates the start of a slow maturing process for the boys in blink-182. Here, they began tackling issues with more seriousness than in their previous efforts. They still retained their sense of humor, though, as indicated by the title of the album (say it quickly).
In 2016, Tom DeLonge described the event that inspired this song in an episode of Ernie Ball: The Pursuit of Tone. "It was my 18th birthday," he said. "I came home and there were these scratch marks all the way across the sidewalk from the front door out to the driveway. I was like, 'What the hell are all these scratch marks?' I followed them up from the driveway to the front door. Open the front door and all the furniture's gone. Someone dragged the furniture out. I realized that my dad moved out right at that moment. It was the 20th anniversary of my parents and all hell broke loose on that day. Like anybody, it would affect you to see your parents break up like that. I wanted to tackle that in a song.
'Stay Together for the Kids,' it was a simple thing. But I think the magic of it was that it was all pretty, but I wanted to do something we never did before and that was on the chorus – turn on all the pedals.
I think we hit on something that sounded like adolescents lashing out over being caught in the middle of a storm that they had no control of. You grow up thinking that your parents are more powerful than they are. They know a lot more than they do and as you get older, you start to learn that they're just people, too. They're about as vulnerable and as destructible as you are, and I think that's what's great about rock 'n' roll. It's not about the music as much as it's about the emotion, and the emotion is what resonates with people. They feel something. I think sometimes we lose sight of that importance. When you're a musician, you get caught up in the business. You get caught up in the work. You get caught up in the fame or whatever, and then all of a sudden someone slaps you upside the head with reality, and you're like, 'Wow.' Art is really important. It's just really, super important."
This peaked at #7 on the Modern Rock chart.
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This was featured in the 2010 documentary Restrepo when a soldier in Afghanistan plays it on an acoustic guitar.
Blink-182 filmed the original music video, directed by Samuel Bayer ("
Smells Like Teen Spirit"), in the days leading up to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The clip shows the guys playing in a suburban house that is demolished by a wrecking ball, symbolizing a home that had been torn apart by divorce.
The band thought the visual was too reminiscent of the collapse of the World Trade Center and decided to film an alternate video staged in an abandoned mansion.
Blink reunited with their Enema Of The State producer, Jerry Finn, on the follow-up album, Take Off Your Pants And Jacket. Both were major successes, with the former boosting them to superstardom and sending them on their first arena tours, and the latter becoming their first #1 album.