Ah, the Offspring's Americana. I'm strangely excited to be listening to this record right now, perhaps if nothing else because it's been years since I've done so. This is album is my junior year of high school. Not exclusively, but a lot of images of giant trampolines or riding shotgun in my friend's Bronco surface almost immediately with this one.
I'll still never be able to forgive "Pretty Fly" for the egregious radio ear raping, but this overall this record is surprisingly intelligent and focused. Yes, you can accuse "Why Don't You Get a Job?" of ripping off "Obla-Di-Obla-Da," but that's the point. The album is called Americana, for god's sakes. The intention of the record is to reference as much pop culture as it can. I can sympathize with this.
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Kids are always afraid of being accused of ripping off someone else's riff. But I vividly remember first learning the opening riff to "The Kid's Aren't All Right" and then fashioning my own very similar riff to a song that my high school band dubbed "#2."
I still think an artist who admits their influences is better off than someone who hides behind the veil of originality, a word that simultaneously means so much more and so much less to me than it did in high school.
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Just like Robert Plant would be crippled as a singer without the word "baby" in his lexicon, Dexter Holland would be lost without his "woahs."
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Ah, a hidden track. Those have kinda gone the way of the dodo along with CDs, haven't they?
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