YMMV / Angels & Airwaves

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: One on We Don't Need To Whisper: "It Hurts", an angsty Break-Up Song that's also out of left field compared to the rest of the album.
  • Jumping Rooftops off of I-Empire at that, largely being an instrumental segway
  • Anomaly off of The Dream Walker. While a great song, it's pretty different from the rest of the album due to primarily being an acoustic number to cap off the album.
• Broken Base: Any music after I-Empire. Heck, even any music after We Don't Need To Whisper. How about AVA's status as a multimedia project as opposed to just being a regular band? Heck, this is a band lead by the lead singer of blink-182, which means the Broken Bases for both bands intermingle. Let's just leave it at that.
  • Atom's departure and adding Ilan Rubin to the lineup. Ilan Rubin is well regarded as a drummer, overall musical talent and a nice guy to boot, but Atom was with the band since its inception. Understandably, people would be attached to him. The circumstances of Atom leaving were amicable (he still does stuff on occasion with Tom's shoe brand, Macbeth and he's chummy with Ilan), but the reasons he left^note on record as AVA taking a different creative direction, rumored to partially be due to the backseat that AVA takes when blink is more active have gotten the fandom in a tizzy. There's also concern about Ilan easing into the band and taking a more active role in album production beyond just being the drummer much faster than the fandom anticipated. Again, let's just leave it at that.
  • Matt leaving: People going "Who cares? He's just the bassist!" versus the people who definitely do care, especially since Matt played a much larger role in the band besides bass, including playing synths from I-Empire onward and being involved with a lot of the band's design work. If and when he comes back, it'll likely become a non-issue.
• Fridge Brilliance: "Young London" features a subtle but noticeable diversion from the traditional pop structure of most of the band's songs. Namely: there's no chorus between the opening two verses, and no additional verses after the chorus starts; it just starts by repeatedly playing verses, and ends by repeatedly playing the chorus. While this might seem like a random detail, it makes sense when you consider that it's (in all likelihood) a song about death and the afterlife. The traditional structure of a pop song is cyclical, repeatedly returning to the same chorus after each successive verse—which would be more appropriate for a depiction of reincarnation. By dividing the song into two clear and distinct halves, it conveys a linear transition from life to death, implying that you can't go back once you reach the afterlife.
• Tear Jerker: Several of their songs are pretty emotional, examples being 'The Gift', 'Do It For Me Now', and 'A Little's Enough'.
  • 'Rite of Spring' can be considered this, due to being a coming of age story about Tom's life, detailing his broken childhood due to the divorce of his parents, his start with blink-182 and the eventual break up of the band, and his current status on his life. It's pretty hard hearing how Tom started, especially considering how much some fans blame him for EVERYTHING.
  • 'START THE MACHINE'. A perfect song detailing Tom's emotions over the break-up of blink-182, it's pretty heart rendering hearing Tom singing his frustration and sadness over the event, but still wishes some closure from Mark and Travis. It did however become a Heartwarming in Hindsight when blink-182 did reunite after Tom, Mark, and Travis reconciled. It veers right back into tearjerker territory when you realize in 2015, history (mostly) repeated itself and despite Mark and Travis kicking him out the band and continuing blink without him, Tom still wants their friendship.
  • 'Tunnels' and 'Anomaly' off of The Dream Walker 'Tunnels' especially since it's about Tom's deceased father.
  • Meta example: Tom's heartbroken news regarding the death of Critter, who was basically a Mentor to him and a vital part of the band's sound.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Initially, this was the opinion of many blink-182 fans who hoped that Angels & Airwaves would be blink-182 2.0.
  • Served with a bit of irony in that Mark and Travis's post-breakup project +44 was much closer to a blink 2.0. Fast forward a few years, blink got back together together and AvA continued while +44 faded out, which led to a different implementation of the trope being that some fans considered new blink to "just be AvA with Mark and Travis". Doubly ironic in that after Tom was kicked out of blink, the mixed bag reception to Neighborhoods and Nine led to many of those same people coming around to AVA's new 2019 singles, even saying they were "better than Nine" before Nine even came out.
  • The reason for AvA's Broken Base over the albums past I-Empire. The farther AVA gets from pop punk, the more complaining you're likely to see, which is par for the course for the music coming from the other band Tom was in. Even with the changes, the band still considers themselves a punk act. They also never gave the impression of being a straight forward pop punk act like blink to begin with, hence the people complaining about it NOT being blink 2.0.
  • Even the likelihood of Matt coming back at some point didn't stop people from being very upset about him leaving the band to help raise his newest child, especially with the confusion over just who the heck is his replacement was. Eddie was officially announced as his replacement and showed up up in behind the scenes shots for what eventually turned out to be the video for Tremors. However, Bob Bryar (previously My Chemical Romance's drummer and friend of David) tweeted a picture showing a live show setup showing him on bass and monitors. Thankfully, people have still been receptive to Eddie joining. The possibility of Bob joining? Not so much. Made even more complex with Eddie not included in most of the The Dream Walker promotion with Tom and Ilan^note David is confirmed to still be in the band, though he's absent in the promotion as well with the exception of the Tunnels video and rumblings of a Thrice reunion. Made even weirder by Matt not reappearing for new 2019 music and touring despite Tom heavily hyping him, his being credited (supposedly incorrectly) on "Rebel Girls". His touring replacement Matt Rubano has been well received, but despite showing up in music videos, he does not appear in promo materials and he's largely relegated to a side stage role.
• Win Back the Crowd: Both AVA fans and soured blink fans alike have been receptive to "Rebel Girl" and "Kiss and Tell". After years of begging for AVA to tour live again, their return was greeted with a warm welcome back that kept flooring Tom!

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