The Spotify Billions Club has a new entry: The Offspring’s 1999 hit “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” It’s the band’s second song to hit a billion streams on the platform, following 2008’s “You’re Gonna Go Far, Kid.”
“The Kids Aren’t Alright” was released as the third single from the band’s hugely successful fifth studio album, 1998’s Americana. It peaked at no.11 on both Billboard’s Mainstream Rock chart and the UK Singles chart.
The song reflects on disillusionment with the American dream, pulling inspiration from real life stories from frontman Dexter Holland’s suburban neighborhood. “One kid had a nervous breakdown, another died in an auto accident, another was on crack and killed his sister,” Holland told the LA Times. “These were people I knew, or maybe who Ron knew. It’s always weird to go back there. [The song idea] kind of hit me as I was going through the streets and driving by the houses.”
He continued, “The neighborhood looks like ‘Happy Days,’ but it’s really ‘Twin Peaks,’ a lot of weird stuff goes on, and maybe you never get over it. They’re going to be [mad] now: ‘You made our neighborhood look bad.’ That’s not the point. It’s a certain reality, a false illusion we’re trying to point out.”
The song’s music video, directed by Yariv Gaber, captures these feelings by focusing on a single empty living room where various persons, including band members, constantly shift and morph into each other. It ends on a shot of a happy, 1950s-style family shifting into a young man on his own.
Order The Offspring’s Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace now.