As such, Take Off Your Pants and Jacket continues the pop-punk tone that Blink-182 had honed and made famous, albeit with a heavier post-hardcore sound inspired by bands such as Fugazi and Refused.

"[2] In the public eye, Blink became known for their juvenile antics, including running around nude;[15] the band made a cameo appearance in the similarly bawdy comedy American Pie (1999).

[16] While grateful for their success—which the trio parlayed into various business ventures, like Famous Stars and Straps, Atticus Clothing and Macbeth Footwear[17]—they gradually became unhappy with their goofy public image.

[2] The group had written a dozen songs after three weeks and invited their manager, Rick DeVoe, to be the first person outside Blink-182 to hear the new material, which the band found "catchy [but with] a definitive edge".

[24] Barker also proposed being promoted to official partner in the band; prior to 2001, he had been considered a touring musician only, and while he had arranged the songs on Enema, he received no publishing residuals.

While the band worked with few days off, the sessions also proved to be memorable: "We took long dinner breaks, ate Sombrero burritos, watched Family Guy and Mr. Show, and laughed way too hard," said Hoppus.

[28][29] MCA put pressure on the band to maintain the sound that made Enema of the State sell millions; as a result, DeLonge believed the album took no "creative leaps [or] bounds.

[28][30] In 2013, Hoppus referred to Take Off Your Pants and Jacket as the "permanent record of a band in transition ... our confused, contentious, brilliant, painful, cathartic leap into the unknown.

[11][32] He felt that the sessions created an unspoken competition between him and DeLonge, between who could write the superior lyrics: "Our confidence and insecurity begat some heated differences, sometime to the point where we had to leave rooms and cool down," he said in 2013.

Finn and McGrath, exacting in acquiring the best sound, took two days to assess microphone placement, different compressors, and shifting EQs before committing Barker's drums to tape.

"[21] Roger Joseph Manning, Jr. returns to add keyboard parts, while Tom Lord-Alge served as the mixing engineer, which was conducted at Encore Studios in Burbank.

[36] Journalist Joe Shooman called the title "a glint of sharp intelligence behind the boys' humour as it draws oblique attention to the fact that, latterly, Blink-182 had often been encouraged to get naked in order to promote themselves.

[25] CD copies of the album were initially released in three separate configurations for the first million printings:[1] the "red plane", the "yellow pants" and the "green jacket" editions.

[1] Executives hoped to market the three editions separately in order to boost sales ("buy all three"), but the band argued strongly against this tactic as they felt it was predatory to their fans.

"[42] Joshua Klein from The Washington Post described its familiar "sturdy pop elements — chiming guitars, exciting drums, endearing vocals and ear-catching chord changes.

"[56] "Shut Up", a "broken-family snapshot", revisits the territory of youthful woes, described by Shooman as a "fairly familiar rites-of-passage tale" that "adds to general themes of isolation, alienation and moving on to a new place that pervade Take Off Your Pants and Jacket".

[59] Take Off was a marquee rock release of the season,[60] alongside acts like Staind and Tool;[61] writer Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times viewed it an "unlikely modern-rock radio blockbuster in an era otherwise dominated by vapid nu-metal.

Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone was generally the most effusive of the positive reviews, praising the unpretentious attitude of the band: "As they plow in their relatively un-self-conscious way through the emotional hurdles of lust, terror, pain and rage, they reveal more about themselves and their audience than they even intend to, turning adolescent malaise into a friendly joke rather than a spiritual crisis.

"[57] Darren Ratner of AllMusic felt likewise, writing that the record is "one of their finest works to date, with almost every track sporting a commanding articulation and new-school punk sounds.

[79] The Village Voice called the sound "emo-core ... intercut with elegiac little pauses that align Blink 182 with a branch of punk rock you could trace back through The Replacements and Ramones Leave Home, to the more ethereal of early Who songs".

[66] Aaron Scott of Slant Magazine, however, found the sound to be recycled from the band's previous efforts, writing, "Blink shines when they deviate from their formula, but it is awfully rare ...

The band work so hard at it, and the music is such processed sounding mainstream rock played fast, that the album becomes a paradox: adolescent energy and rebellion made joyless".

[78] British magazine New Musical Express, who heavily criticized the band in their previous efforts, felt no more negative this time, saying "Blink-182 are now indistinguishable from the increasingly tedious 'teenage dirtbag' genre they helped spawn".

The magazine continued, "It sounds like all that sanitised, castrated, shrink-wrapped 'new wave' crap that the major US record companies pumped out circa 1981 in their belated attempt to jump on the 'punk' bandwagon.

[93] The main headlining tour visited arenas and amphitheaters between July and August 2001, and was supported by New Found Glory,[93] Jimmy Eat World, Alkaline Trio[94] and Midtown.

[97] In the wake of the tragedy, the band draped an American flag over a set of amplifiers and drummer Barker played on a red, white, and blue drum kit.

[104] Likewise, the 2003 film Riding in Vans with Boys follows the Pop Disaster Tour throughout the U.S.[101] Take Off Your Pants and Jacket arrived at the apex of an early aughts, pre-9/11 moment for youth culture.

[106] A 2001 Federal Trade Commission report condemned the entertainment industry for marketing lewd lyrics to American youth, specifically naming Blink-182 as among the most explicit acts.

[112] Its songs became common on peer-to-peer sites like Kazaa and LimeWire,[113][114] and its sound proved influential: its ubiquity made it a "sonic bible for many millennials" according to Kat Bein of Billboard.

Blink producer Jerry Finn naturally returned to engineer, and DeLonge, ostensibly trying to avoid paying a session player,[30] invited Barker to record drums—making Hoppus the odd man out.