Blink-182 were determined to step things up on their third album. The Californian trio had made a big breakthrough with the puerile punk-pop of their 1997 second record Dude Ranch and now they made a plan to up the ante across the board: more puerile, more punk, more pop. Nowhere is that final ambition better summed up than on their indelible anthem All The Small Things. The second single to be released from 1999’s Enema Of The State, it became their biggest ever hit, the sort of song that takes a band from out of one lane and into another, a mainstream crossover that turned Blink-182 into an arena-dwelling global phenomenon.
Though it had been released as part of the record six months earlier, All The Small Things only really took off globally when released as a single in the UK in March 2000, 25 years ago this month. Things were already rapidly heating up for the band, with Enema Of The State’s lead single What’s My Age Again? doing the leg work in setting the stage for another huge leap up the commercial ladder. But no-one quite had any idea just what a huge all-conquering hit its follow-up would become.
