Songfacts®:

• Well, it's the years that are going by for The Offspring. More than a quarter-century since they formed, the American Punk Rock band released their ninth studio album, Days Go By. This uptempo tune is the first single and the title track from the set and it finds Dexter Holland reflecting, "All your anger, all your hurt. It doesn't matter in the end." The song premiered on KROQ on April 27, 2012.
• Days Go By is the Offspring's first album to feature drummer Pete Parada, who replaced Atom Willard in July 2007. Although Willard was still a member of the band during the recording of their previous record, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace, session musician Josh Freese actually handled the drum tracks.
• Speaking with Rolling Stone, Holland said that the Offspring are trying to impart a message through the Days Go By album. "Part of why I chose 'Days Go By' as the single and the title of the album is because it really kind of shows – not only with me – that the world has been through a sh--ty few years and it's been really tough on a lot of people," he explained. "People have really gotten hurt and, at the end of the day, no one's gonna pick you up.
  
  You've gotta pick yourself up and figure out how to move on," he continued. "So I guess acknowledging that it's been tough, but also having a message of hope, is what I really wanted people to take away from this record."
• Initially there were doubts this would even make it onto the album, let alone become the title track and first single. "That song literally went up and down in relation to how it was doing next to the other songs as the record went forward," said Holland to Billboard magazine: "It was probably the first song we started working on and just about the last song that we finished. We really kept coming back to it over the course of the record."
• There are different renderings that can be found on the net before the band completed the track. "There are versions on YouTube where the guitar riff is different, the verse is different, the chorus is different-so it's a totally different song now, really," Holland told Billboard, adding, "It was kind of toward the end [of recording] when people started listening to it. My friends, my manager started pointing at it, saying, 'That's the one you've got to go with.'"
• Holland discussed the song's meaning with Spinner: "Time marches on," he said. "We have to get through life and pull ourselves up by our boot straps. No one is going to do it for you. At the same time, there's a message of hope, and I wanted that to come across. The last few years have been really tough on a lot of people. You can see it on TV or in the newspaper. The song doesn't simply say, 'Let's revolt.' It's about the spirit that things can get better."