Blink-182 Has Reunited (Again)
All the small things couldn't keep Blink-182 apart. Reuniting for the first time since 2015, Tom DeLonge, Travis Barker, and Mark Hoppus will embark on an international tour in support of their first single together in over a decade. Titled "Edging," the track is set to drop this Friday, right before tickets go on sale on Monday, October 17. Starting in March 2023 and lasting until February 2024, the tour will include over 75 shows and appearances from Turnstile, In the Wallows, The Story So Far, and Rise Against.
Blink-182 announced its reunion in a bizarre YouTube video titled, "WE ARE COMING! to a city near you!" that featured parody drug commercial testimonials about fans excited to "see the band come." The innuendo is not lost. "If they come, I'm going to explode," one person says. "With Delonge back after nearly a decade, fans can expect that electric on-stage magic that the trio has delivered over the years," a press release from the band read. "With their new album due in 2023, ‘blink-182’ is stoked to be facing their future together."
The band has gone through quite a lot in the last decade. After Tom DeLonge quit to pursue his search for UFOs, he was replaced by Alkaline Trio's Matt Skiba for nearly five years and two studio albums. DeLonge later retracted that he quit indefinitely and joked in an interview with Esquire that everyone must have thought he "lost his mind" and "quit his band to chase aliens." In a way, he did do that, but not everyone who straps on the tin foil hat actually gets name-dropped by the Pentagon. Throughout 2019 and 2020, The U.S. Department of Defense declassified three videos about UFOs brought to light by DeLonge's work. "They mentioned my name and stuff,” he said back in 2021. "Like: it is crazy.”
In the meantime, Travis Barker collaborated with popular artists such as Post Malone, Machine Gun Kelly, Trippie Redd, and Willow. After Hoppus was diagnosed with cancer in June 2021, the trio met, opened up about personal issues, and made up. "I was really, feverishly wanting to show Mark some of these things that I've learned and I know," DeLonge told Esquire at the time. He described a healer he learned about who cured lab mice of terminal cancer through Native American rain dances and visualizations of love. Hoppus was declared cancer-free later that year, and rumors speculated that a happy Blink-182 meant potentially happy Blink-182 fans in the near future. Now, they're ready to embark on a massive tour. I'll be there dressed in the worst 90s fashion imaginable, channeling a Southern California pop-punk accent to "na-na-na-na" until they have to turn the lights off and carry me home.
You Might Also Like
