Vintage The Offspring T-Shirt, The Offspring is an American rock band from Garden Grove, California, formed in 1984.
When the Offspring returned to the studio in January 1994 to record their third album, the band's relations with producer Thom Wilson had begun to strain. Three months later, The Offspring released what would become their biggest selling album, titled Smash. The album was initially released to little mainstream attention until its lead single "Come Out and Play" received airplay from the Los Angeles radio station KROQ-FM, helping to raise the band's profile and eventually hitting number one on the Billboard rock charts for two weeks in the summer of 1994. The success of "Come Out and Play" not only propelled Smash to peak at number four on the Billboard 200 and receive simultaneous gold and platinum certification four months after its release, but it also helped bring punk rock into the mainstream and is often considered a groundbreaking album for the pop punk genre. The album's next two singles, "Self Esteem" and "Gotta Get Away", also had similar success to "Come Out and Play", both chart wise and radio airplay wise. Smash has continued to sell consistently well in the years since its release, setting an all-time record for most units sold by an independent label band at over 20 million records.