Lyrics, Narrative and Vocal Timbre
 

I think it's really important to break down the lyrics and narrative of Dammit before going any further, so I can address some key critiques whatever wannabe Anthony Fantano or who-the-fuck-ever will be waiting in the wings to deliver. Dammit is about the late honourable Sir Mark Hoppus being broken up with by his girlfriend, he's inconsolable, by the time he approaches his friends, Mark has pieced a timeline together of the breakup and he theorizes, rightly or wrongly, that his ex-girlfriend had been cheating on him leading up to the breakup.

First of all, I fucking guarantee a good portion of people reading this, including myself, have experienced this exact emotion and series of nights overthinking timelines with ex partners who may have cheated on you. It's a REALLY fucking hard emotion to digest. But hey, relationships are fucking hard man, and people are growing all the time, don't hate your exes man, hating your exes is cliché as fuck. They were important to you at one point in your life and no one owes anyone anything let alone owes you to be in a relationship with you, yea their communication was probably garbage but guess what, yours probably was too man, we're all growing aye. Honestly what's the point in hating anyone in 2023.
 

Except Anthony Kiedis, fuck him man, let's all hate him.
 

Alright, let's look at excerpts of lyrics from the first two verses, keeping the narrative in mind;

"It's alright to tell me what you think about me. I won't try to argue or hold it against you. I know that you're leaving you must have your reasons"
 

This is the breakup, Mark hasn't begun dissecting the timeline here. You can hear weakness in the way Mark is singing, he's confused, as far as he knew this relationship was awesome. We all know that your high school partner is literally the girl you'll end up with your entire life, imagine that not being a thing eh. Stink buzz. Mark effortlessly portrays confusion and weakness in his voice because he's an absolute master of his craft. Straight up, Robert Plant is fucking garbage compared to the Captain of the First XV Mark Hoppus.

Let's move on to the second verse;
 

"The steps that I retrace, the sad look on your face. The timing and structure did you hear he fucked her?"

Mark has it all figured out, his girlfriend cheated on him. You can hear from his timbre, Mark is angry. Mark's voice is cracking while he's singing this phrase, because the raw emotion is too much for him. Even the most heartened composers can still be broken. On the surface these lyrics could be seen as hostile, but Mark has you fucking dweebs all figured out, look at the next excerpt;

"I'm writing the report, on losing, and failing"
 

Now this lyric seems like a filler, but if pop punk taught us one thing, it's that it is ALL KILLER NO FILLER eh?? EH?? Fuck I hope at least one person gets that joke. This lyric isn't filler, it's Mark accepting that he's done things in that relationship that led to its end. He's metaphorically writing this report on the last period of his life, and he directly references failing. He's thinking about all the things he may have done in that relationship that pushed his girlfriend away, keeping in mind that the narrative device of this verse is an inner monologue so you have to believe that Mark isn't lying to himself, because Mark Hoppus might be a lot of things (all good things), but The Last Jedi Mark Hoppus is NOT a liar. We're about to move on to the chorus, which backs up the journey of self discovery.
 

"And it's happened once again, I'll turn to a friend, Someone that understands, Sees through the master plan"

The first half of our chorus is Mark leaning on his friends, he needs support and his friends are there to listen. He continues to lean on his friends, whenever he sees them he's a pit of despair, he constantly talks about his ex-girlfriend and wants them to side with him. But being a pop-punk band, they're from a small town that they likely have a plan to escape, so Mark's friends are likely friends with his ex-girlfriend too, which leads us to this absolute gold,
 

"But everybody's gone, and I've been here for too long, to face this on my own"
 

Mark realizes he's alienated himself from his friends, he's been treating his friends as a band-aid, instead of accepting what has happened and finding his way through the stages of grief to finally, acceptance. This brings us to the single most powerful lyric that has ever been written, in all of music.
 

"Well I guess this is growing up"
 

With one immaculately structured sentence, Mark has discovered the most important feeling that any person could hope to discover in themselves.

 

Accountability.