Blink-182 first broke into the music scene with their 1999 song “What’s My Age Again?” but fans might not know is who inspired the song.

As it turns out, Green Day can take all the credit.

Frontman Mark Hoppus recently sat down for a Chris DeMakes a Podcast interview and divulged the song’s origins. 

The hit, which started out as “a joke song” that was supposed to be named “Peter Pan Syndrome,” is the product of a messed up chord progression of a Green Day song.

“There was a Green Day song called ‘J.A.R.’ that’s on the Angus soundtrack, and it starts off with this bass intro that’s really rad,” Hoppus explained. “I was messing around on the guitar trying to learn that and then I kind of messed up the progression and I played it incorrectly.”

That unintentional hand slip changed the course of the single, with Hoppus detailing, “I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds kind of cool,’ and that was the basis for the opening riff of the song. It was me trying to learn ‘J.A.R.’ on guitar and messing it up and coming up with something that I liked that was different than that.”

The story doesn’t end there because, eventually, Blink-182 went on tour with Green Day and Hoppus finally had the opportunity to profess his love for “J.A.R.”

Unfortunately for him, his confession to Billie Joe Armstrong — which happened on the first night of the tour — ended with embarrassment.

When gushing about the song and how much he loved it, Armstrong quipped, “Yeah, that’s cool. Mike Dirnt wrote that one. That’s the only one of our songs that he wrote.”

Hoppus, while embarrassed, tried to backpedal and explained, “I was like, ‘Oh, I love all your songs a lot.'”

By Megan Stone
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