Up All Night (Blink-182 song)
Encyclopedia
"Up All Night" is a song by the American pop punk
band Blink-182
, taken from their sixth studio album Neighborhoods
(2011). The song premiered on July 14, 2011, and was released digitally the next day. The track is the band's first new song to be released following their "indefinite hiatus" that spanned four years.
"Up All Night" was the first song Blink-182 wrote and recorded after their reunion in February 2009. The track was written collectively by the trio - Tom DeLonge
, Mark Hoppus
and Travis Barker
. The song was planned for release as a single in July 2009, but withheld because the band felt it was not complete. As the band progressed in recording Neighborhoods, "Up All Night" gradually became heavier. Barker compared the song's sound to that of former Blink-182 side-project Box Car Racer
.
The song premiered July 14, 2011, on Los Angeles
radio station KROQ-FM
and the band's official website. A digital single was released the following day. Critics have received the song positively, with favorably noting similarities with the band's side-projects. Two music videos were released for "Up All Night" in August 2011. The main video, directed by Isaac Rentz, features the band playing in a neighborhood during a reckless block party, and a second video features a montage compiled from fan-made YouTube
videos that used the band's music illegally. Critics generally reacted to both videos favorably, with many media outlets covering the fan-made composition.
When the band set off for tour, Tom DeLonge described the song as "almost finished." The band raised concerns that the song would debut to some fans as a bootleg-recorded version on sites such as YouTube
, and opted to not release it: "It’s not so much that we were concerned that it was going to get played somewhere where we didn’t have control of it," said DeLonge. "We were just concerned that the first impressions weren’t going to be the beautiful hard work that we put into recording the song and the way we recorded it. The foundation of the song remains largely the same as when the band first began work on it in 2009, but as they recorded more songs, they kept coming back to "Up All Night", and the song became "harder and heavier than its original incarnation", acoording to Hoppus, "Initially the chorus had much more air. It was a lofty, synth-y chorus, but we wanted the first song that people heard to be much more of a rocker." The band changed much of the song's instrumentation and wrote heavier guitar and bass parts, and DeLonge wrote the guitar progression for the chorus. Barker then began work on the drum portion of the song which, according to Hoppus "really solidified the rock element of the track. The half-time intro of the last section was all him, and I think punctuates the song very well."
with a tempo
of 156 beats per minute.
Barker, in June 2009, called "Up All Night" a "logical step-forward" from the music found on the band's previous effort, Blink-182 (2003). Barker also hinted that when the band was able to get back together and record, that that would be the direction they would take. He called the track "heavy," and added that it sounded like "if you mixed Box Car Racer
and Blink." "Up All Night" contains elements of everything the band has done,and pushes further than they've gone before, according to Hoppus.
-based radio station KROQ-FM
on July 14, 2011. Though originally scheduled to play on Friday at 7:30am, the song's premiere was moved earlier, to Thursday night. In response to the single release, the official Blink-182 website crashed several times, Hoppus' new Google+
account crashed, and Blink-182 was a top trending topic on Twitter
worldwide.
Music critics were generally positive regarding the song. James Montgomery of MTV News
called the track "a booming, skittering mix of beats, arena-rock and yes, maybe even a little indie," that recalled "perfectly" all of the members' various side-projects over the years, most prominently Blink-182 and the Box Car Racer song "Elevator". Billboard
wrote that "The verse and bridge riffs retain their palm-muted glory, but the track's main riff is much heavier than anything in previous Blink singles." Vulture
's Amons Barshad said that "Up All Night" is "still a bit of a curveball, just for not being the soothing pop-punk palliative you may have expected as the first comeback release. The verses have a spacey effect and bare bass line, familiar from early aughts single 'Feeling This
,' but the verses shout out 'lies' and 'demons,' and the guitar parts keep on slipping into a stomping hardcore riff." Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly
called the song a "thunderous, midtempo rocker." Matthew Perpetua of Rolling Stone
commented that the track "delivers the band's distinctive pop-punk hooks on a monumental, stadium-size scale," and, in a full review of the song, Rolling Stones Monica Herrera summarized the song while giving it three and a half stars out of five: "Jagged riffs smash into warbled sci-fi synths, as DeLonge and bassist Mark Hoppus trade glum proverbs — 'Everyone lives to tell the tale of how we die alone someday,' Hoppus wails — before wrapping it all up in one neat wallop." The Boston Globe
Scott McLennan asserted the song boasts a "richer groove" than the songs from the band's Enema of the State or Dude Ranch records, stating "The song may be more mature in its thinking, but musically keeps to the model Blink-182 originally built." Jonah Bayer of Spin noted the song's "experimental guitar riffage and a quasi-ska drum beat," describing the lyricism "continu[ing] in the same progressive vein as their last album, 2003's Blink-182."
to release an unofficial music video for "Up All Night" August 2, 2011, a montage compiled from fan-made YouTube
videos that used the band's music illegally. After an online search of over 14,000 videos, several were compiled to create the montage, presented as "The Blink-182 film festival you didn't know you entered". The video's description read "To launch our first single in eight years, AT&T helped us search YouTube for every instance of fans using our music without our permission. And then we rewarded them for it. This film is made out of clips from all those videos. Thanks for being a fan." Released August 2, 2011, it features skateboarders doing tricks and amateur musicians playing along to the band's songs. Devin Brown of CBS News
compared the video to Radiohead
's marketing strategy, in that the band "rewarded the illegal use of their music, and in turn promoted their new music. It's a smart move for the band that has been forcibly absent from the music scene since disbanding in 2005." Entertainment Weekly
' s Ashley Fetters said that it "functions as a tongue-in-cheek thank-you note to their generation-Napster
fan base: It’s a wry, affectionate montage". Rolling Stone
called it "silly and tongue-in-cheek, but pointed: If you think you're allowed to do whatever you want with their copyrighted works, they should be obliged to do the same with yours."
The official music video for "Up All Night" was filmed July 26, 2011. DeLonge stated that it would have a more serious tone in comparison to some of the band's more humorous videos of the past, saying "at this point in our career, what we're trying to do with this record and everything, it's not going to be totally the same as what people expected. But, old Blink videos, we had a lot of serious ones and we had a lot of funny ones. This one, I think, will be along the lines of being more serious". The video premiered August 26, 2011. The video was directed by Isaac Rentz and depicts a very erratic block party. Blink-182 debuted at number 21 on Billboards Social 50 due to the buzz generated by the release of the video. The video accumulated over two million views in a matter of days. In total, the video release helped grow Blink-182's fanbase by 476,000 fans week-to-week.
Pop punk
Pop punk is a fusion music genre that combines elements of punk rock with pop music, to varying degrees. Allmusic describes the genre as a strand of alternative rock, which typically merges pop melodies with speedy punk tempos, chord changes and loud guitars...
band Blink-182
Blink-182
Blink-182 is an American rock band consisting of vocalist and bass guitarist Mark Hoppus, vocalist and guitarist Tom DeLonge, and drummer Travis Barker. They have sold over 27 million albums worldwide since forming in Poway, California in 1992...
, taken from their sixth studio album Neighborhoods
Neighborhoods (Blink-182 album)
Neighborhoods is the sixth studio album by the American pop punk band Blink-182, released September 27, 2011 through DGC Records and Interscope Records. Their first album of new material in eight years, its recording followed the band's 2009 reunion after a four-year hiatus...
(2011). The song premiered on July 14, 2011, and was released digitally the next day. The track is the band's first new song to be released following their "indefinite hiatus" that spanned four years.
"Up All Night" was the first song Blink-182 wrote and recorded after their reunion in February 2009. The track was written collectively by the trio - Tom DeLonge
Tom DeLonge
Thomas Matthew "Tom" DeLonge, Jr. is an American rock musician. He is the guitarist and one of the two lead vocalists for the American pop punk band Blink-182 as well as the guitarist and lead vocalist for the alternative band Angels & Airwaves...
, Mark Hoppus
Mark Hoppus
Mark Allan Hoppus is an American musician, record producer, and television host. He is the bass guitarist and one of the two lead vocalists of the pop punk band Blink-182, as well as the bass guitarist and lead vocalist of the alternative rock band +44. He is a co-founder of both bands...
and Travis Barker
Travis Barker
Travis Landon Barker is an American musician, producer and entrepreneur, most noted as the drummer for the American pop punk band Blink-182, as well as the alternative rock band +44, the rap rock band The Transplants, and the alternative rock band Box Car Racer. He was a frequent collaborator with...
. The song was planned for release as a single in July 2009, but withheld because the band felt it was not complete. As the band progressed in recording Neighborhoods, "Up All Night" gradually became heavier. Barker compared the song's sound to that of former Blink-182 side-project Box Car Racer
Box Car Racer
Box Car Racer was a short-lived American post-hardcore band from San Diego, California, formed in 2002. The band was a side-project of guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge and drummer Travis Barker of Blink-182, along with lead guitarist David Kennedy of Hazen Street, and touring bassist Anthony Celestino...
.
The song premiered July 14, 2011, on Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
radio station KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM — branded 106.7 KROQ — is a commercial modern rock radio station licensed to Pasadena, California serving the Greater Los Angeles. The call sign is pronounced "kay rock." It is the flagship station of Loveline hosted by Dr...
and the band's official website. A digital single was released the following day. Critics have received the song positively, with favorably noting similarities with the band's side-projects. Two music videos were released for "Up All Night" in August 2011. The main video, directed by Isaac Rentz, features the band playing in a neighborhood during a reckless block party, and a second video features a montage compiled from fan-made YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
videos that used the band's music illegally. Critics generally reacted to both videos favorably, with many media outlets covering the fan-made composition.
History
After the reunion at the 2009 Grammy Awards, Blink-182 began production on a new studio album. As the band got back together, drummer Travis Barker said that the trio immediately "got inspired" by practicing their old songs and listening to them again, and they decided to record demos. There were four demos done, and only one was near completion, called "Up All Night". The song was originally titled "The Night the Moon Was Gone", a name DeLonge's daughter, Ava, came up with. Quickly they realized that it was too ambitious to complete it before their reunion tour began in July.When the band set off for tour, Tom DeLonge described the song as "almost finished." The band raised concerns that the song would debut to some fans as a bootleg-recorded version on sites such as YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
, and opted to not release it: "It’s not so much that we were concerned that it was going to get played somewhere where we didn’t have control of it," said DeLonge. "We were just concerned that the first impressions weren’t going to be the beautiful hard work that we put into recording the song and the way we recorded it. The foundation of the song remains largely the same as when the band first began work on it in 2009, but as they recorded more songs, they kept coming back to "Up All Night", and the song became "harder and heavier than its original incarnation", acoording to Hoppus, "Initially the chorus had much more air. It was a lofty, synth-y chorus, but we wanted the first song that people heard to be much more of a rocker." The band changed much of the song's instrumentation and wrote heavier guitar and bass parts, and DeLonge wrote the guitar progression for the chorus. Barker then began work on the drum portion of the song which, according to Hoppus "really solidified the rock element of the track. The half-time intro of the last section was all him, and I think punctuates the song very well."
Composition
According to sheet music published at Musicnotes.com by Hal Leonard Corporation, "Up All Night" is written in common timeCommon Time
"Common Time" is a science fiction short story written by James Blish. It first appeared in the August 1953 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and has been reprinted several times: in the 1959 short-story collection Galactic Cluster; in The Testament of Andros ; in The Penguin Science Fiction...
with a tempo
Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...
of 156 beats per minute.
Barker, in June 2009, called "Up All Night" a "logical step-forward" from the music found on the band's previous effort, Blink-182 (2003). Barker also hinted that when the band was able to get back together and record, that that would be the direction they would take. He called the track "heavy," and added that it sounded like "if you mixed Box Car Racer
Box Car Racer
Box Car Racer was a short-lived American post-hardcore band from San Diego, California, formed in 2002. The band was a side-project of guitarist/vocalist Tom DeLonge and drummer Travis Barker of Blink-182, along with lead guitarist David Kennedy of Hazen Street, and touring bassist Anthony Celestino...
and Blink." "Up All Night" contains elements of everything the band has done,and pushes further than they've gone before, according to Hoppus.
Release
"Up All Night" premiered on Blink-182's website and Los AngelesLos Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
-based radio station KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM
KROQ-FM — branded 106.7 KROQ — is a commercial modern rock radio station licensed to Pasadena, California serving the Greater Los Angeles. The call sign is pronounced "kay rock." It is the flagship station of Loveline hosted by Dr...
on July 14, 2011. Though originally scheduled to play on Friday at 7:30am, the song's premiere was moved earlier, to Thursday night. In response to the single release, the official Blink-182 website crashed several times, Hoppus' new Google+
Google+
Google+ is a social networking and identity service, operated by Google Inc.The service was launched on June 28, 2011, in an invite-only "field testing" phase. The following day, existing users were allowed to invite friends who were over 18 years of age to the service to create their own accounts....
account crashed, and Blink-182 was a top trending topic on Twitter
Twitter
Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
worldwide.
Music critics were generally positive regarding the song. James Montgomery of MTV News
MTV News
MTV News is the news division of MTV, one of the first and most popular music television network in the U.S., as well as some of MTV's related channels around the world. MTV News began in the late 1980s with the program The Week In Rock, hosted by Kurt Loder, the first official MTV News correspondent...
called the track "a booming, skittering mix of beats, arena-rock and yes, maybe even a little indie," that recalled "perfectly" all of the members' various side-projects over the years, most prominently Blink-182 and the Box Car Racer song "Elevator". Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
wrote that "The verse and bridge riffs retain their palm-muted glory, but the track's main riff is much heavier than anything in previous Blink singles." Vulture
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
's Amons Barshad said that "Up All Night" is "still a bit of a curveball, just for not being the soothing pop-punk palliative you may have expected as the first comeback release. The verses have a spacey effect and bare bass line, familiar from early aughts single 'Feeling This
Feeling This
"Feeling This" is a song by American pop punk band Blink-182, released on October 2, 2003 as the lead single from the group's fifth studio album, Blink-182. Bassist Mark Hoppus and guitarist Tom DeLonge share songwriting credits on the track...
,' but the verses shout out 'lies' and 'demons,' and the guitar parts keep on slipping into a stomping hardcore riff." Clark Collis of Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
called the song a "thunderous, midtempo rocker." Matthew Perpetua of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
commented that the track "delivers the band's distinctive pop-punk hooks on a monumental, stadium-size scale," and, in a full review of the song, Rolling Stones Monica Herrera summarized the song while giving it three and a half stars out of five: "Jagged riffs smash into warbled sci-fi synths, as DeLonge and bassist Mark Hoppus trade glum proverbs — 'Everyone lives to tell the tale of how we die alone someday,' Hoppus wails — before wrapping it all up in one neat wallop." The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe
The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...
Scott McLennan asserted the song boasts a "richer groove" than the songs from the band's Enema of the State or Dude Ranch records, stating "The song may be more mature in its thinking, but musically keeps to the model Blink-182 originally built." Jonah Bayer of Spin noted the song's "experimental guitar riffage and a quasi-ska drum beat," describing the lyricism "continu[ing] in the same progressive vein as their last album, 2003's Blink-182."
Music videos
Blink-182 partnered with AT&TAT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
to release an unofficial music video for "Up All Night" August 2, 2011, a montage compiled from fan-made YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
videos that used the band's music illegally. After an online search of over 14,000 videos, several were compiled to create the montage, presented as "The Blink-182 film festival you didn't know you entered". The video's description read "To launch our first single in eight years, AT&T helped us search YouTube for every instance of fans using our music without our permission. And then we rewarded them for it. This film is made out of clips from all those videos. Thanks for being a fan." Released August 2, 2011, it features skateboarders doing tricks and amateur musicians playing along to the band's songs. Devin Brown of CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
compared the video to Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
's marketing strategy, in that the band "rewarded the illegal use of their music, and in turn promoted their new music. It's a smart move for the band that has been forcibly absent from the music scene since disbanding in 2005." Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...
Napster
Napster is an online music store and a Best Buy company. It was originally founded as a pioneering peer-to-peer file sharing Internet service that emphasized sharing audio files that were typically digitally encoded music as MP3 format files...
fan base: It’s a wry, affectionate montage". Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...
called it "silly and tongue-in-cheek, but pointed: If you think you're allowed to do whatever you want with their copyrighted works, they should be obliged to do the same with yours."
The official music video for "Up All Night" was filmed July 26, 2011. DeLonge stated that it would have a more serious tone in comparison to some of the band's more humorous videos of the past, saying "at this point in our career, what we're trying to do with this record and everything, it's not going to be totally the same as what people expected. But, old Blink videos, we had a lot of serious ones and we had a lot of funny ones. This one, I think, will be along the lines of being more serious". The video premiered August 26, 2011. The video was directed by Isaac Rentz and depicts a very erratic block party. Blink-182 debuted at number 21 on Billboards Social 50 due to the buzz generated by the release of the video. The video accumulated over two million views in a matter of days. In total, the video release helped grow Blink-182's fanbase by 476,000 fans week-to-week.
Charts
| Chart (2011) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Canada (Canadian Hot 100 Canadian Hot 100 The Canadian Hot 100 is a music singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks songs in Canada. The chart debuted in the Billboard issue dated June 16, 2007 and was made available for the first time via their online services on June 7, 2007... ) |
58 |
| Canada (Canadian Rock Chart Canadian rock/alternative chart The Canadian rock/alternative chart was first published on June 11, 1995 by RPM magazine under the name Alternative 30. The song which held the number-one spot on this first chart was "More Human than Human" by White Zombie... ) |
22 |
| Canada (Canadian Alternative Chart Canadian rock/alternative chart The Canadian rock/alternative chart was first published on June 11, 1995 by RPM magazine under the name Alternative 30. The song which held the number-one spot on this first chart was "More Human than Human" by White Zombie... ) |
3 |
| UK Singles (The Official Charts Company UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... ) |
48 |
| US Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday... |
65 |
| US Alternative Songs (Billboard) | 3 |
| US Mainstream Rock Songs (Billboard) | 31 |
| US Rock Songs Rock Songs Rock Songs is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine which ranks the airplay of songs on alternative, mainstream rock and triple A radio stations. The first chart was published in the issue dated June 20, 2009. "Know Your Enemy" by Green Day was the first number-one song. The Rock Songs... (Billboard) |
6 |