The 20 greatest The Offspring songs – ranked
From 1989’s self-titled LP to Ixnay On The Hombre and beyond, we rank the Californian punk-rock legends’ biggest tunes…
Words: Sam Law
So ubiquitous have The Offspring been as mainstream punk heavyweights over the last three decades that, when reminded that latest album Let The Bad Times Roll is their first in nine years, many fans would struggle to believe they’ve been away at all. That’s largely due to the strength of a back-catalogue whose songs somehow feel simultaneously ageless and emblematic of their specific moments in time. Every rock fan worth their tattered T‑shirt will instantly recognise the spring-loaded slapstick of Pretty Fly (For A White Guy) or Come Out And Play’s weird Eastern-inflected riff. Hell, even obscure deep-cuts like Kill The President and Get It Right (neither of which make this list) have a habit of cropping up as notable milestones in conversations surrounding punk’s re-emergence as
The story of The Offspring in 10 songs
Dexter Holland and Noodles guide us through The Offspring’s musical history – from mainstream mega-hits to all-out punk ragers.
Words: Ian Winwood
With a good-natured laugh, Dexter Holland recalls that “so many people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I thought your band’s music was really happy – until I read the lyrics’”. Sometimes maligned, often misunderstood, for almost 40 years The Offspring have been a standard-bearer for the kind of American punk rock that cracked the U.S. mainstream in the middle years of the ’90s. In this, the group from Orange County played as pivotal a role as any; released in 1994, to this day their third LP, Smash, remains the highest-selling independent rock release of all time.