Music Review: Blink-182 "Stay Together For The Kids"

Blink-182

Stay Together For the Kids

Album: Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

Year: 2002

                Mark Hoppus resents his parents’ inability to work things out for the family in the self-pitying “Stay Together For The Kids.”

            A wistful guitar opens the single, setting a wondering tone.  The house is quiet. He walks to the bathroom and washes his face. On the way to the kitchen, he sees his father’s suitcase standing by the cabinet. His mom plasters a smile and tells him good morning. She looks like she hasn’t slept all night and her face is still red. His father walks in the door, tells him hello and ignores his mom. His parents aren’t who they are used to be. He wants to shout at them to stop pretending but it wouldn’t matter. He wants to hide into his room and write out his feelings. (“It's hard to wake up/When the shades have been pulled shut/This house is haunted/It's so pathetic/It makes no sense at all/I'm ripe with things to say/The words rot and fall away/What stupid poem could fix this home/I'd read it every day.”)

             In the chorus, his parents sat him and his brother down at the kitchen. They told them they were getting a divorce. They will be seeing Dad for Christmas Eve this year and come back home for Christmas Day. He wonders if his parents will ever have second thoughts and think they did all they could to save their family. (“So here's your holiday/Hope you enjoy it this time/You gave it all away/It was mine/So when you're dead and gone/Will you remember this night/Twenty years now lost/It's not right.”)

           With every hurtful word they threw at each other, he felt the stinging pain in his chest. Their marriage has been disingerating the past seven years. His dad had an affair. Mom let him stay. As far he knows, his dad still shuts out his mom and mom snipes at him whenever she can. He doesn’t know why they won’t communicate. Why can’t they get past their problems? (“Their anger hurts my ears/Been running strong for seven years/Rather than fix the problems/They never solve them/It makes no sense at all/I see them everyday/We get along, so why can't they?/If this is what he wants/And this is what she wants/Then why is there so much pain?”)

                  The chorus is sung again.

                  An extended chorus is sung to end the single. (“So here's your holiday…It's not right/It's not right/It's not right/It's not right.”)

              Hoppus’ montone vocals might as well be reading from a Teleprompter. His emotionless undermine the meaty lyrics. Nonetheless, he is able to be ticked but he only ends up sounding bratty that he couldn’t get the toy he wanted for Christmas.

           The  dull “Stay Together For the Kids” had the potential but not the execution.