“Feeling This” by blink-182

"Feeling This" is the first thing you hear on blink-182's untitled fifth album, and in 2003 it was also the first single, sent out on Geffen to announce that the band had changed. Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker wrote it together, the song took shape on the very first day of work on the album, and Jerry Finn produced and mixed it, with Ryan Hewitt recording.

The pop-punk bones are still there, but everything around them has grown up. The verses come shouted and snarling, the choruses bloom into sweet harmonies, and the rhythms pull in Latin and hip hop moves that knock the whole song off its usual bounce. DeLonge and Hoppus swap perspectives, weaving desire, romance and raw vulnerability into a back-and-forth between them, and there are layered vocals, samples and studio tricks all over it, before it signs off with an a cappella coda. David LaChapelle's video, set in a dystopian reform school, matched the darker mood of the album.

Critics praised the vocal interplay and the playing. The song went to number two on Billboard's Modern Rock chart and number 15 in the UK, the digital single went gold in 2005, and it has opened hundreds of the band's shows since.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.