Blink-182 — I Miss You

I did warn you it was going to get worse. I feel slightly ashamed that I like this, considering I've hated almost everything else that Blink-182 have released, but I do. I am a sucker for the gentle guitar strumming and piano bits at the start, the "we're a rock band and we're doing a ballad, so we're going to need an industrial vat of strings over here!" backing, and I fell for the way the second verse appears to be from a different song entirely; the first was all hopeful, but the next opens with the cry of "Where are you?" and then goes on to talk gibberish about spiders. Like all good pop songs, it knows not to hang around. You get two verses, then it's straight into the breakdown and fade-out. None of this dallying around, coughing and spluttering while waiting for the string section to pack up and go home (Mr. Gallagher, I'm looking in your direction).

Yikes, admitting to liking a Blink-182 song. 2004 has been an odd year…