This is my essay about The Offspring's hit album Smash>>>>>



The Offspring - Smash

Artist use their music as a kind of vessel to get their message across to their audience. Musicians have an overall theme in their music but try to deliver a more précis message when creating an album. In The Offspring’s 1994 album Smash they try to deliver the message of the reckless youth’s inevitable future of inheriting all of the world’s issues. The songs Nitro (Youth Energy), Not The One, and Smash clearly display the theme of this album and how the youth of today must change in order to preserve the future.

The song Nitro (Youth Energy) is about how the youth of today will destroy tomorrow’s world. The lyrics state, “We might as well just throw it all and live like there's no tomorrow.” This quote clearly displays that today’s youth doesn’t care at all about what might happen in the future. Therefore, the future is doomed. Another quote is, “Who are living under the gun/every day you might be gone before you know/so live like there's no tomorrow.” This shows the mentality of today’s youth. They feel as if they are helpless against the future so they “live like there’s no tomorrow”.

The track Not The One is all about how the extremely reckless youth must take on the problems of tomorrow. These problems, though, are not the fault of the current youth. This idea is represented through the lines “We're not the ones who leave the homeless in the streets at night/we're not the ones who've kept minorities and women down/still we grow and then the problems they become our own.” Even though this is true the generation currently in charge of the world was once the youth and they had to grow up to inherit the problems of the world.

The song Smash is all about one person who has decided to not conform anymore and wants to be him self. The Offspring are saying that not conforming to one image and just being your self is the way to preserve the future. This idea is presented through the lines “Head over heels I've fit in before/now I don't want to do it no more/I just want to be who I want to be/guess that's hard for the others to see.” These lines show the thoughts of just one person but represent an idea for a generation.

The Offspring have always based their music on reckless youth. But this album is really centered around the idea of the future of these kids and what they will face. To say their message is all about the inevitably doomed future of today’s youth is only partially correct. The Offspring are also saying that the future has hope as long as the children remain individual but stay organized as one.