As the singer/songwriter fronting
blink-182,
Tom DeLonge was one of the biggest punk rock stars at the turn of the millennium. He parlayed that success into the spacier project
Angels & Airwaves, a group heavily indebted to the college rock of
U2 and
the Cure, which
DeLonge formed while
blink was on hiatus in the back half of the 2000s. For a while, he kept both a reunited
blink-182 and
Angels & Airwaves afloat, but after the
blink reunion collapsed in 2015, he launched a solo career with the clearinghouse demo
To the Stars.
To the Stars appeared two decades after
blink-182's 1995 debut
Cheshire Cat, but that wasn't the start of
DeLonge's musical career. A native of the San Diego suburb Poway, the teenage
DeLonge loved skateboarding and punk, learning how to play guitar in his early teens. In his late teens, he formed a group with drummer Scott Raynor and bassist
Mark Hoppus, flying through a variety of names before landing on
blink-182. They cut a demo called Flyswatter in 1993 and another called Buddha in 1994, signing with Cargo Records later that year.
Cheshire Cat, their official debut, arrived in 1995, supported by heavy touring, all of which helped the group take the leap to the major-label
MCA in 1996.
Dude Ranch, their major debut, came out in 1997 and the single "Dammit," along with the group's slot on the inaugural Warped Tour, helped raise the their profile. Raynor left the band in 1998, replaced by former
Aquabats drummer
Travis Barker. This new lineup recorded 1999's
Enema of the State, the album that turned
blink-182 into crossover stars thanks to the hits "All the Small Things" and "What's My Age Again?" Over the next few years,
blink-182 was the reigning pop-punk band, with their 2001 album,
Take Off Your Pants & Jacket, sustaining the group's momentum.
Despite this success, tensions started to surface in the band when
DeLonge cut the 2002 side project
Box Car Racer with
Barker but not
Hoppus. A full-band effort, the eponymous
blink-182 came out in 2003, and its darker, artier sound didn't satisfy some of the band's fans. Then came further fractures in the band's relations, highlighted by
Travis Barker's decision to film a reality show for MTV called Keeping Up with the Barkers and
DeLonge's desire to slow down their schedule so he could spend time with his family. All this led to
blink's breakup in 2005.
DeLonge resurfaced in 2006 with a new band called
Angels & Airwaves, an ambitious outfit inspired by '80s college rock icons
the Cure and
U2.
A&A released their debut,
We Don't Need to Whisper, in 2006, quickly followed by
I-Empire in 2007. The next year,
DeLonge decided to reunite
blink-182 in the wake of
Barker surviving a plane crash. A full tour followed in 2009 but the reunion album,
Neighborhoods, didn't surface until 2011; during this down time,
DeLonge recorded the ambitious, multi-part
A&A project,
Love Album, Pts. 1 & 2.
Neighborhoods performed respectably but softly, leading the band to part from their major label -- now Interscope, after several corporate consolidations -- in October 2012. An indie EP called
Dogs Eating Dogs showed up at the end of 2012, then
DeLonge turned his attention back to
Angels & Airwaves, recording the 2014 album
The Dream Walker. Next up was another
blink-182 album, but the band fell apart again in early 2015.
DeLonge rallied by releasing his first solo album,
To the Stars -- a collection split between
blink demos and ideas for
A&A -- that April. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine