NOFX throw a Viking funeral for their classic 1994 song, “Linoleum,” on their new track, “Linewleum,” off their upcoming album, Single Album. The record is out February 26th via Fat Wreck Chords.
“Linewleum” is a delightful exercise in meta myth-making (and myth-busting): Musically, it’s basically the same song as “Linoleum” and the lyrics find Fat Mike trying to parse why the Punk in Drublic opener became such hit despite never being a single — and not even having a chorus. After deciding it’s time to “put Linoleum out to stud and make sure that it gets laid,” Mike delivers a few more verses actually reflecting on what it means to be an aging rocker and his daughter reading his memoir: “Why did she feel the need to tell me/That she knows her dad is more than kinda weird/She knows that I do drugs, she knows that I’m kinky/But what keeps me up at night is that her and her friends know that I drink pee.”
Accompanying “Linewleum” is an equally self-aware music video that opens not with NOFX playing the song in the studio, but Avenged Sevenfold — one of the countless bands who’ve covered “Linoleum” over the years. The clip is dedicated to all those bands and features footage of artists and groups from around the world bashing out the track.
In a statement, Fat Mike said of “Linewleum,”: “One night I stayed up till 4 a.m. checking out all the different versions [of ‘Linoleum’] on YouTube. Watching hundreds of bands from over 28 countries (mostly Indonesia) doing ‘Linoleum’ was a humbling experience for me. So I decided to write a song that was a shout-out to all those people that learned those four chords and remembered the non-rhyming lyrics. Then I asked the biggest of all the bands (Avenged Sevenfold) to play some leads on the song. Then M Shadows suggested we do a video together. Then I figured I should put all of the bands in the video. Well, I couldn’t fit all the bands, but I picked a bunch of cool ones! A song about not playing a song that’s not a hit song with a video about other bands covering the song! This is why I love punk rock [and] writing punk songs. Rules out the door!”
From Rolling Stone US
