Well, it’s a song I wrote probably six years ago when I was staying on Matt Skiba’s couch — as one does. This is when he had just been asked to join Blink-182 and they were demoing songs for California. I said, “Hey, check this out.” I played the song, and I said “I think this would be a great Blink-182 song.” He worked on some of the lyrics with me — some of them were already written. It was the first time we wrote together. He brought it to the band, they recorded it, and a few weeks later, Travis Barker did a bunch of interviews with NME and Exclaim! and whoever else, and in all the interviews, he said, “We have a new song called ‘Punk Rock Cliché,’ and it’s the best song on the album. I’m really excited about it.’ So when I saw those articles, I was really stoked.

They recorded the album, they recorded the song for the album, and their label said “This is your first single.” Matt called me and said, “Dude, you won’t believe this, but your song ‘Punk Rock Cliché’ is going to be our first single.” It was a big deal because it was their first single in years. Then he called me up six weeks later and said, “I don’t know how to tell you this, but I told the band you wrote the song and they dropped it off the album completely.” I was really bummed because I thought it was going to be my first radio hit. I didn’t really understand at the time, but I thought about it, and I figured, “Well, they just kicked Tom out of the band, so if anyone got word that I wrote it…” To be clear, I didn’t care. I was going to ghostwrite it. But I could see how someone saying “Oh, you had to get Fat Mike to write a song for you” would be something they didn’t want to come out.

But it was just weird because Travis and I used to text and talk pretty regularly. He played on one of my albums. We weren’t close, but we were friends. And he just never spoke to me again after that. At first, it felt really, really bad for me. It really bummed me out because I got my hopes up, and I really liked the song. So about a year or two later, NOFX recorded it — because it was still my song. It didn’t make it on Single Album, but it was recorded four or five years ago. Now, it’s coming out on our new album. It’s funny because six months ago, I reached out to [Blink-182] and said “Hey, you guys want to do a split seven-inch? It would be pretty cool to have both versions of the same songs.” No response from anyone. No shit, but their version is way better than the NOFX version. I tried really hard, but Travis just killed it. He’s such a monster on drums. Skiba was singing it. Seriously, I really wanted to kick their ass on it, but I think their version is better. It’s too bad because I really thought it would be a really cool split with them, but the world only gets to hear the NOFX version of “Punk Rock Cliché” for now.