“I Miss You” by blink-182

"I Miss You" was the second single from blink-182's self-titled 2003 album, and it's the sound of the band stepping well outside their usual lane and pulling the curtains shut. Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker wrote it, Jerry Finn produced, and the arrangement is almost entirely acoustic: stand-up bass, cello and piano over a drum loop played with brushes, stitched into a moody, grooving whole with a gothic chill borrowed from the Cure.

It was worked up in a home studio set up inside a rented mansion, with DeLonge and Hoppus retreating to separate rooms to write lyrics on the same theme and then fitting their halves together. What they came back with is about vulnerability and heartache, the dread of losing someone and loving a person who might not love you back, with DeLonge's nasal, stretched-out delivery giving it its signature ache. Roger Joseph Manning Jr. added keyboards and Tom Lord-Alge mixed it.

It went to number one on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks and into the UK top 10, and Jonas Åkerlund's video drops the trio into a haunted mansion run by ghosts. Critics warmed to its offbeat shape and tone, it has been covered across genres, it helped inspire the Chainsmokers' "Closer", and it has passed one billion streams on Spotify.

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