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Blackball (Offspring song)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| "Blackball" | |||||
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| Single by The Offspring from the album The Offspring |
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| A-side | "I'll Be Waiting" | ||||
| Released | 1987 | ||||
| Format | Vinyl | ||||
| Recorded | 1987 | ||||
| Genre | Punk rock | ||||
| Length | 03:24 | ||||
| Label | Black label | ||||
| Writer | Dexter Holland | ||||
| Producer | The Offspring | ||||
| The Offspring singles chronology | |||||
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"Blackball" is part of a double A-Side single by The Offspring, and is their first commercial release. It was released along with "I'll Be Waiting" and it can be found as the ninth track on their self-titled album released two years later - The Offspring. Along with "I'll Be Waiting", "Blackball" was added to the album, so that The Offspring would not just be a 20+ minute mini-album.
The band itself released "Blackball" on Black Label Records (which the band named after a brand of beer), as a 7" vinyl record. Only 1000 copies of this record were made, 500 with a sleeve and 500 without, and it took the band two and a half years to sell them all. Ironically, this record is now the most expensive piece of The Offspring's work as it is also the rarest.
The song discusses a number of themes, mainly modern society. "Blackball" is claimed to be 'the new disease' of pragmatism and shielding oneself from the constant wars and trials of the modern world. Similarly it could just discuss the lack of life in society today - the narrator reminisces when people 'were still real', and that there is 'nothing left to feel'.
This second meaning is emphasised in the chorus, and elaborated on in the second verse. The narrator now says that the regret he feels for things he has said and done cannot compare with the regret he feels for having never tried something. This theme of always being the same and never trying something new appears in later songs by The Offspring (such as The Meaning of Life and I Choose) though with a different viewpoint.
- Blackball was featured in the videogame Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4.