We thought it would be exceedingly difficult to rank every single album that The Offspring put out. But once you realize that their last five albums are basically dog-shit, this article serves the function of two lists: ranking The Offspring’s meteoric rise into pop-punk stardom, and ranking what happened after that. But this is the case with most legacy bands. In fact, we challenge you to find any band that has been around as long as The Offspring that’s still putting out their best work.
In other words, every great legacy comes with a handful of clunkers. And The Offspring isn’t exempt from this curse of longevity. So feast your eyes upon The Hard Times’ definitive ranking of every studio album that The Offspring put out.
10. Days Go By (2012)
It’s not that “Days Go By” is necessarily a bad album, it’s just The Offspring’s worst album. The problem with “Days Go By” is that it lacks urgency. But this is understandable, considering that Dexter, Noodles, Greg, and whoever they had drumming on this one (Josh Freese) are all well into middle-age territory at this point. This album is safe. This album is logically where The Offspring should be at this phase of their career. This album stands on its own if you listen to it in a vacuum. But when pitted against the rest of their discography, it leaves a lot to be desired.
Play it again: “Days Go By”
Skip it: “Dirty Magic,” the original version from 1992’s “Ignition” is better.
9. Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace (2008)
Overall, “Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace” seems like a feigned attempt on The Offspring’s part to shake off their signature sound. The whole album sounds tentative, as if they wanted to try something new, but were too afraid to fully commit. A common throughline for most post-2000 Offspring is that the songs are solid and well produced/performed, but at the same time, who cares? If you threw The Offspring’s entire discography on shuffle, and songs from this album popped up, casual fans wouldn’t be able to reliably guess what era of The Offspring this batch of songs is from.
Play it again: “Hammerhead”
Skip it: “Kristy, Are You Doing Okay?”
8. Let The Bad Times Roll (2021)
“Let The Bad Times Roll” is the follow-up to 2012’s “Days Go By,” and it’s The Offspring’s tenth and most recent album. And in a way, it’s a return to form. But while the songs are quite catchy and reminiscent of their earlier work, it’s difficult to listen to at times. The most glaring problem with this album is that Dexter can’t really hit those high notes anymore. But the songwriting is there; if they tuned their guitars a half-step down, this album probably would have ranked a little higher.
Play it again: “Behind Your Walls,” it’s a bop with solid harmonies in the chorus.
Skip it: “Gone Away,” it’s a cover of a Five Finger Death Punch cover of an Offspring song; too meta.
7. Conspiracy of One (2000)
“Conspiracy of One” was the highly anticipated follow-up to 1998’s “Americana,” and at this point it’s The Offspring by numbers. It’s a solid album but it doesn’t really offer anything new, and it’s clear that they were latching onto a tried and true formula at this point. But can you really blame them? From 1997 to 2000, The Offspring released “Ixnay on the Hombre,” “Americana,” and “Conspiracy of One,” back, to back, to back, while touring heavily to promote each album. That being said, these three albums could be repackaged as “Ixnay on the Hombre I-III,” and we don’t think anybody would be mad about it.
Play it again: “Special Delivery”
Skip it: “Denial, Revisited”
6. Splinter (2003)
“Splinter” is The Offspring’s seventh studio album, and their first studio album without Ron Welty on Drums. Ron Welty left the band in 2003 to form Steady Ground, a band that nobody has ever heard of. Welty filed a lawsuit against The Offspring in 2020 for unpaid royalties, so clearly things went great for him after leaving The Offspring at the height of their popularity. As for the album itself, it was the most diverse album to date at this point in The Offspring’s career. But at the same time, they’ve pulled from this same bag of tricks before, so it comes off as tired.
Play it again: “Da Hui”
Skip it: “The Worst Hangover Ever”
5. The Offspring (1989)
Though this is by far the most raw album that The Offspring has put out, it’s got so much going for it. But it’s evident that the up-and-coming band had a bit of an identity crisis when they were working on this one. Songs like “Jennifer Lost the War,” and “Blackball” (among others) are politically driven, which isn’t an uncommon throughline in The Offspring’s career. But then next thing you know, you’re being assaulted by a Misfits-like horror-punk song called “Beheaded,” which highlights the finer points of lopping off the heads of your loved ones.
Play it again: “Kill the President.”
Skip it: “Out on Patrol.”
4. Americana (1998)
Though “Smash” still had better sales, to many, “Americana” is the album that made The Offspring a household name. We just wish that “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” wasn’t the song that brought on so much commercial success. As a standalone song, we guess we can’t fault it too much, but as an Offspring song, it just feels out of place. That being said, “Americana ” piggybacks perfectly off of “Ixnay on the Hombre,” and further develops the sound that was established on that album. Without even counting, it’s safe to say that “Americana” has the most amount of “woahs” to date on any album put out by The Offspring. Simply put, this album is fun as hell, and it still holds up.
Play it again: “Pay the Man”
Skip it: “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)”
3. Ixnay on the Hombre (1997)
Like we said when we were talking about “Americana,” and “Conspiracy of One,” “Ixnay on the Hombre” is The Offspring perfecting their sound after breaking through with “Smash.” The problem with perfecting your sound four albums into your career is that it’s hard to determine where to go next. But “Ixnay on the Hombre” from start to finish is a classic pop-punk album, with fun tracks about smoking weed, hating stuff, and pretending you’re an airplane on the living room floor. And if that’s not a strong enough selling point, this album at the very least reminds us of “Crazy Taxi,” and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
Play it again: “Leave it Behind,” has that cool bendy guitar riff, and it’s short and sweet.
Skip it: “Me & My Old Lady,” nobody wants to hear about Dexter Holland getting his dick sucked.
2. Ignition (1992)
“Ignition” was a telling album, but we just didn’t know it at the time. Coming off the moderate success of their self-titled debut, The Offspring further developed their sound. While this album still has a lot of the punk elements that we love their first album for, we see a better production. We don’t think anybody could have expected The Offspring to follow up this album with Smash, but in hindsight, you can see that “Smash” was the next logical step in their sonic journey. Most importantly, “Ignition” showed us that The Offspring was capable of more than just that fast-paced SOCAL pop-punk sound, and songs like “Dirty Magic,” and “Forever and a Day” show us that the foursome had range, which they explore on “Ignition.”
Play it again: “Get it Right”
Skip it: “L.A.P.D.”
1. Smash (1994)
This may seem like a cop-out, but the numbers don’t lie. “Smash” sold over 11 million albums worldwide, and it’s safe to say that Epitaph saw a hefty payday for putting this masterpiece out. “Smash” is genre-bending, political, and funny, and the pacing, track-listing, and flow of the album are unmatched. “Smash” is pop-punk, but alternative. “Smash” is fast-paced, but knows when to slow down. “Smash” is not without humor, but also talks about societal problems that need to be addressed. In other words, “Smash” is The Offspring’s magnum opus. (Buy a copy from our store)
Play it again: “Bad Habit,” because anybody who’s ever had a daily commute knows this song is a form of wish fulfillment.
Skip it: “What Happened to You?,” too ska for The Offspring.
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“This goes against Americans’ First Amendment right to shitpost online.”
“I don’t think it’s anything to worry about. The governor just wants to keep us safe from foreign authoritarian regimes by implementing authoritarian-like bans.”
“It seems like nobody is thinking of the influencers of Montana. How are we city folk supposed to know what shampoo is best for our horses?”
“Great, now I’m going to have to drive all the way to North Dakota to get my daily social media dopamine hits.”
“If China doesn’t know what songs Montana teens are lip-syncing to it could be the start of World War 3”
“They ban TikTok but not military-grade rifles? It’s almost like the government doesn’t have your best interest at heart.”
“Hard to believe they’re worried more about your personal and private data going to China than your personal and private data going to US corporations trying to sell you shit and take all your money.”
“It’s like we’re living in 1984, whatever that means.”
This one is a bit confusing. I guess it’s just my fault for expecting a compilation called Punk-O-Rama to actually feature punk music and not just a random assortment of emo outfits, cringe white dudes rapping, and whoever was signed to Tim Armstrong’s label at the time. This was an hour of your life you will never get back if you’re foolish enough to actually listen to this entire thing.
Remember when you were in school when you were assigned a paper and had like three months to write it and it’s the night before it’s due and you haven’t written a word so you stay up the entire night to write and just pray you get a C when you turn it in? Well, here’s that in compilation album form.
Much like the beloved family dog that couldn’t really walk up the stairs or hear too well anymore, Epitaph put the Punk-o-Rama compilations out of their misery after this one. An improvement on the previous one, this one is still cursed by being punk in name only thanks to the heavy emphasis on metalcore, hip-hop, and emo. The mid-aughts were truly a terrible time. Thanks Myspace.
After listening to “Punk-O-Rama 7” you might expect each subsequent compilation to get progressively worse. Fun fact: this was the first entry in the Punk-O-Rama series I hadn’t bought since I started buying them in ‘98. Though this one is definitely of its time though which can be either good or bad depending on your outlook of punk music circa 2003. (Which did not age well.)
Epitaph’s second compilation could’ve easily been referred to as their sloppy seconds, which per my more online friends is not a sexist term. While it added more artists including the Descendents and Millencolin that weren’t on the first, much like one’s sloppy seconds, this one is just kind of forgettable.
Sometimes it’s just best to quit while you’re ahead. This comp isn’t terrible, but then it has its fair share of duds and you get the sense that some of the bigger bands were just phoning it in due to a contractual obligation. A pre-conspiracy theory Exene Cervenka shows up to do a cover of “We’re Desperate” with Pennywise so it’s got that going for it.
This is the only comp in the series to feature the Offspring before they signed with Columbia and that seemingly gave record stores such as Sam Goody and FYE an excuse to charge $20 for this the fucking thing while still keeping the ‘dirt cheap’ sticker on it. Of course, they’re out of business now, so guess we had the last laugh. But strangely we still yearn for the days when we got gouged on physical media at the mall.
With a little bit of everything under the punk umbrella circa 1998 (so, yes, there’s ska) this compilation could be the Golden Corral of the Punk-O-Rama collections. Though unlike Golden Corral, this won’t leave you spending the remainder of the evening with the trots.
Stylistically and quality-wise on par with Punk-O-Rama III. What gives this comp the edge is its inclusion of Tom Waits and Refused. And if you’re going to get into a whole ‘Tom Waits isn’t punk’ argument with me, you can kick rocks. Being a pedantic nerd is for posers and accountants.
Am I making this one number one because it features The Hives before they got big? Maybe. I mean, what other compilation featuring some kick-ass tracks by Millencolin, Dropkick Murphys, and The Bouncing Souls is going to teach you about the metric system? Well, maybe a Metric LP, but they’re not punk technically, and yes I understand that now I look like the pedantic nerd..
This Happy Gilmore ripoff is a vehicle for everyone’s second favorite racist podcaster, Adam Carolla. This generic underdog sports movie came out in 2007 and is based on his background in boxing and carpentry. The story offers nothing, but has a surprisingly good soundtrack featuring Bad Religion, The Offspring, and two Social Distortion songs. “Story of My Life” is featured over the closing credits, so you don’t need to support this anti-vax right-wing nutjob by digging into the film to listen to how it’s used.
Not only is Benadryl over-the-counter, but they also don’t even check your ID for it. But here’s the tricky part: you need to power through the exhaustion to push your fever dream into the conscious realm in the form of horrifying, waking sleep paralysis. When you finally see the Hat Man staring in your doorway, tell him that you are in a jam, and he’ll help you brainstorm. Just be sure to have a legal pad handy when you lock your gaze into his crimson eyes, and make sure that you don’t prick your finger to write down all your great ideas with your own blood this time.
I want you to familiarize yourself with the concept of the “blackout rage submission.” This one is really easy to pull off if you’re okay with losing track of alarming amounts of time. All you have to do is pour caffeine into your caffeine, let your soul explode into your spreadsheet, and grind your teeth into powder as you submit projects with reckless abandon. If you really want to level up, just make sure you have some smelling salts handy because you really shouldn’t have constricted sinuses when you get started. Time is money, and you can only swallow so much mucus when your stomach is already a hotbed of ramen noodles and Imodium.
When you’re ready to take your five-minute scroll through Upwork, you don’t want to over-commit, so it’s best if you slow down with some cold medicine to regain some lucidity. But here’s the trick: you’ve got to take the night-time formula during daylight hours, because you’ve already got nine gamer drinks gestating in your gut, and you’re about to go into orbit. I strongly recommend those blue Nyquil capsules. But just like in “The Matrix,” you might find yourself trying to peel off the wallpaper in your apartment because you think the seams are hiding the world outside the simulation, and you really can’t afford to be distracted right now. So make sure you have a totem handy so you can reliably discern between reality and hallucination.
If you follow all of the above tips faithfully, and without variation, you’re going to have to power through some diarrhea. It’s also worth noting that the store brand eucalyptus-infused facial tissues are not only surprisingly affordable but also an excellent way to soothe your anus after yet another “freelancer’s blowout.” And through the searing pain of trying to convince yourself that “being your own boss” allows you to have the best work/life balance you’ve ever had, just remember that one of the best parts about working in a gig economy is that you can cry in the comfort of your own bathroom for as long as you want.