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About

Genius Annotation

A popular song by Blink-182 describing a young boy’s suicide note. It’s a break from their usual light-hearted material, but the end is still life affirming as he decides not to go through with it.

“Adam” is used as a metaphor towards Mark’s depression he experienced while on tour with Blink-182. He stated:

Tom and Travis always had girlfriends waiting back home, so they had something to look forward to at the end of the tour. But I didn’t, so it was always like, I was lonely on tour, but then I got home and it didn’t matter because there was nothing there for me anyway.

“Adam’s Song” is also commonly attributed to the urban myth of Adam Krieger, a fictional character whose suicide letter is falsely portrayed as being the original letter that the band received before writing the song. This fake suicide letter, that is often posted online via places like tumblr, is fictitional and was originally written for a play.

The song’s title is also a reference to a skit from the cult classic HBO sketch show, “Mr. Show With Bob and David”, where in the sketch a band called Titanica writes a song called “Try Again (Adam’s Song)” with the intent of encouraging a fan to kill himself so they won’t be able to take him on tour after said fan tried to kill himself after hearing their song “Try Suicide.”

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

What did ​​blink-182 say about "Adam's Song"?
Genius Answer

Excerpt from Rolling Stone’s 2000 interview, Blink-182: The Half-Naked Truth:

Hoppus and [Skye] Everly have been together for about a year; before that, he was unhappily single. “Adam’s Song,” Blink’s current single, is a suicide note set to music, but Hoppus says he wrote it about being lonely on tour. The couplet “I couldn’t wait till I got home/To pass the time in my room alone” originally ended “to get off the plane alone.”

“Tom and Travis always had girlfriends waiting back home, so they had something to look forward to at the end of the tour,” Hoppus explains. “But I didn’t, so I was lonely on tour. But then I got home and it didn’t matter, because there was nothing there for me anyway.”

What does Adam's letter say?
Genius Answer

It has been falsely rumoured that the song is actually inspired by fictional character, Adam Krieger’s suicide note. The following is from one the band’s tour programs' description of the song:

The story behind that is Mark read a letter someone sent him as an email, that a kid wrote before he committed suicide to his parents. We kind of got together and wrote this sad, slow song. It came out sadder than we ever thought it would, which is good too. Any song that moves you is good. Some people listen to it and go ‘Wow, that’s a real bum-out of a song.’ But it’s one of those things, a story of a kid not being happy in his life, crossed with us being really lonely on tour. At the end of it there’s a better way out, there are better things to do than kill yourself.

The character of Krieger is from a play called “Adam’s Letter”. The full note has been posted to Tumblr.

Credits
Produced By
Drums Technician
Mastered by
Recorded At
Big Fish Recording (Encinitas, CA); Conway Studios (Los Angeles, CA); Mad Hatter Studios (Los Angeles, CA); Signature Sound (San Diego, CA); Studio West (San Diego, CA); and The Bomb Factory (Burbank, CA)
Release Date
June 1, 1999
Adam’s Song Live Performances
View Adam’s Song samples
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