Songfacts®:

• Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge explained the song's meaning and the significance of its title in the album's liner notes: "This song is about one thing only, an astronaut sitting in a space capsule about the size of a car, floating above the earth. He's contemplating if even coming back or not will make a difference on such a negative place. A song about the loss of hope. A term was coined for the breakdown of life in space and it is called Asthenia, the name of the track. At the beginning of the song are actual NASA transmissions."
• Tom DeLonge said: "This song starts with the transmission of our conversation when we land on the moon. It's really weird to hear this song talking to Houston. The whole song theme's about these two guys sitting in their spaceship, not bigger than a car, they're looking through the window and see the space, they can see the earth away. The idea is that they can die up there but that it's maybe worst getting back down on earth. 'Let me die in space.' Asthenia means the loss of all vital conditions." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Tim - Pittsburgh, PA
• Bassist Mark Hoppus explained how the scratchy guitar effect in the intro was achieved: "One of the coolest sounds on the entire record is Tom's guitar in the intro, when the drums come in. We plugged his guitar into a Leslie Cabinet, and the tube in it was dying, glowing purple. It made a gorgeous, scratchy sound that really compliments the lost in space theme song." >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Bradley - Minneapolis, MN
• The band approached the writing and recording process differently for their fifth album, which they viewed as an art project that allowed them to experiment with their sound and lyrical content. Rather than write and demo a bunch of songs and record them one instrument at a time in the studio like they had in the past, they rented a mansion in a luxury community and tackled each song together.
  
  "We would go in and whatever we felt like doing that day we could do, rather than just going in and trying to utilize our studio time quickly," Hoppus told MTV News. "We just really attacked each song. When we burned out on one song, we'd go and do something else. We'd work on maybe three or four different songs in a day, so it kept everything fresh and it took a lot more time, but I think that [effort] really ends up on the record."
• Technically, blink-182 is an untitled album rather than a self-titled one. Eschewing their usual method of choosing album titles based on gross puns, like Enema Of The State and Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, the band wanted their music to speak for itself.
  
  As a result, DeLonge told MTV News, the cover is simply adorned with the band's name and a smiley face "rather than seeing some phrase that's supposed to sum up what the whole record's about. I hate when bands have this one little thing and you think the whole record's about whatever that title is or something, whether it's funny or sad or deep. It's like we'd rather it be: 'This is our band, check it out.'"