美国国家公共电台 NPR The Legacy Of 'Adam's Song,' An Anthem To Darkness, Loss — And Recovery

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(SOUNDBITE OF BLINK-182 SONG, "ALL THE SMALL THINGS")

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

In 1999, the pop-punk band Blink-182 had a certain reputation. For starters, they named their big album that year "Enema Of The State."

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ALL THE SMALL THINGS")

BLINK-182: (Singing) All the small things, true care truth brings.

SHAPIRO: Their music videos involved streaking¹, and their stage banter² included a lot of toilet humor. But the third single off the album was different. It was a song that dealt with depression, loneliness and, at its very core, suicide. It's called "Adam's Song," and it became a banner for the band's young fans to process feelings that they maybe didn't understand until they got older. NPR's Andrew Limbong has this for our series American Anthem³.

ANDREW LIMBONG, BYLINE⁴: Some of the songs we've billed as American anthems⁵ are huge, undeniable even - war songs, protest songs, the national anthem. But think smaller for a second.

(SOUNDBITE OF BLINK-182 SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

LIMBONG: I'm not talking about Super Bowl stages or national rallies. This is about you alone in your room. And the only thing there for you is a song, one that begins with something as blunt as I never thought I'd die alone.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

BLINK-182: (Singing) I never thought I'd die alone. I laughed the loudest. Who'd have known? I trace the cord back to the wall. No wonder it was never plugged in at all.

LIMBONG: "Adam's Song" was there for TJ Kennedy. He's a 28-year-old second grade teacher who I found through a Blink-182 fan message board. "Adam's Song" means so much to him that...

T J KENNEDY: I got my first paycheck, and I'm like, all right, screw it. I'm going to get a tattoo⁶.

LIMBONG: Of the first notes of the song on a staff.

KENNEDY: Those opening - like, the (vocalizing), yeah.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

BLINK-182: (Singing) I never thought I'd die alone. Another six months, I'll be unknown. Give all my things to all my friends. You'll never step foot in my room again.

LIMBONG: Those lyrics⁸ didn't register with Kennedy as a kid. Mostly he just listened to "Enema Of The State" while playing some Nintendo 64. But as he got older, the words started to cut through. He says he went through a period of deep depression and in college attempted suicide.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

BLINK-182: (Singing) I'm too depressed⁹ to go on. You'll be sorry when I'm gone.

KENNEDY: You'll be sorry when I'm gone I think is just a giant F-you to people because no one really takes mental illness as serious as they would if you, you know, broke a bone or had the flu or something. A lot of people are just like, oh, you know, just be happy, or think positive. But until they experience it, until they go through it, they don't understand how hard that can actually be for a person.

LIMBONG: In a note he wrote at the time, he referenced the lyric⁷ give all my things to all my friends, and he had a friend in mind.

KENNEDY: I just wanted him to have the things that meant the most in the world to me, which were my instruments, because that's how I looked at our friendship. Like, it was such a great and beautiful thing, and I just wanted to make sure he always had a piece of that even if I wasn't around.

LIMBONG: Does he know?

KENNEDY: No, I haven't told him (laughter).

LIMBONG: Talking about this sort of thing isn't easy, not even for the person who wrote the song.

MARK HOPPUS: When I get depressed, I tend to turn inward and kind of shut off from the outside world, much to my own detriment¹⁰.

LIMBONG: Blink-182's Mark Hoppus wrote "Adam's Song" when he was at a professional high but a personal low.

HOPPUS: You know, it feels ridiculous saying, our band's doing really good, but personally I'm just not feeling like I'm connecting. And I don't know. It just - it felt like I had too much good fortune to complain about anything.

LIMBONG: So even though Hoppus couldn't talk about his feelings to his bandmates or manager or friends, he had his fans.

HOPPUS: I feel like they are helping¹¹ me share the difficult time that I went through. So I'm talking about my personal darkest times, and they're talking about their personal darkest times. And we're coming together about this song that kind of helped us both get through that.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

BLINK-182: (Singing) I never conquered, rarely came. Sixteen just held such better days, days when I still felt alive. We couldn't wait to get outside.

LIMBONG: "Adam's Song" became an anthem of sorts for Brittney Berlin. She's a wellness blogger who lives in Brooklyn who's coped with suicide herself. She's suffered depression, attempted to take her own life and then had to deal with the suicide of a friend who happened to be named Adam. And the song helped.

BRITTNEY BERLIN: It connected me with Adam. And it also just, like, helped me feel everything. Like, you feel so many different emotions all at once. And then you feel bad for some of those emotions because some of them are really, really just ugly emotions. But that song just kind of - I felt like it was for Adam. I mean, it was. It's him.

LIMBONG: Everyone relates to this song in their own way, says Liz Friedlander. She directed the music video for "Adam's Song," which was a hit on MTV. Her vision for the video wasn't to just focus on the musicians but the people around them and what they might be going through - the couple having a fight backstage, the person on the payphone by the gas station.

LIZ FRIEDLANDER: We never know what's going on in other people's lives. In people who we have relationships with we don't always know what's going on, but also in the people who you sit next to at a concert or pass on the street or these humans that you brush up against. We all are dealing¹² with our own stuff. And sometimes we don't look, and we don't see, and so then we don't notice.

LIMBONG: The song got a different kind of attention in the year 2000 when national news media covered the death of Columbine High School student Greg Barnes. A year after the mass shooting at his school, he took his own life. The stories at the time reported that "Adam's Song" was playing on repeat when his parents found him. But pinning suicide to one event or one cause oversimplifies a very complex issue. And "Adam's Song" certainly isn't just one thing to its fans. When I posted on that Blink-182 message board, I got stories about bullying¹³, breakups, all sorts of issues. But what nearly everyone mentioned was the turn the song takes after the bridge.

HOPPUS: The bridge and the last chorus is the redemption of the song.

LIMBONG: Blink-182's Mark Hoppus stops singing about dying alone and how great being 16 was and starts singing about being alive tomorrow.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

BLINK-182: (Singing) I never conquered, rarely came. Tomorrow holds such better days.

LIMBONG: There was a period of time when Blink-182 didn't play "Adam's Song" in concert. A friend of theirs, Adam Goldstein, better known as DJ AM, had died from an overdose. Hoppus says he couldn't bring himself to sing it. Now, though, after nearly a decade, the band is playing it again.

HOPPUS: I think of it more now as almost a celebration of hardships gone through and friends lost.

LIMBONG: And it's a celebration that means a lot to a lot of people. Sure, it's not an anthem in the usual sense of the word. It's more of a reminder¹⁴. Remember that tattoo that TJ Kennedy was going to get at the beginning of the story? He never actually got it. The shop was too busy to take walk-ins. Now he's working with the artist to make an even better one. As the song says, tomorrow holds such better days. Andrew Limbong, NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

BLINK-182: (Singing) I never conquered, rarely came. Tomorrow holds such better days, days when I could still feel alive, when I can't wait to get outside.

SHAPIRO: And if you or someone you know may be considering suicide, help is available online at suicidepreventionlifeline.org.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ADAM'S SONG")

BLINK-182: (Singing) Days when I could still feel alive, when I can't wait to get outside. The world is wide. The time goes by.