Madi Diaz pulled double duty while recording her recently released seventh album, Fatal Optimist. In addition to laying down her own songs, the singer also recorded a track-by-track cover of Blink-182’s breakthrough 1999 album, Enema of the State.
The collection — dubbed Enema of the Garden State in honor of the location of the studio — is available only on Bandcamp, with proceeds earmarked for the Defending our Neighbors Fund, which provides legal assistance to immigrants in the midst of the Trump administration’s massive immigration enforcement actions.
“These recordings started out as a fun exercise fueled by the love and fandom I have for blink-182 and the record Enema Of The State,” Diaz wrote in an Instagram post on Monday (Nov. 10) of the re-record she tracked in a New Jersey studio while “peeling back layers and tracking/writing Fatal Optimist. “Every morning producer and engineer Andrew Maury would set up some mics and turn on the 4 track. I had been listening to this batch of songs obsessively (again) on my jogs and I wanted to see if I could run these songs and let the nostalgia drive my memory for the lyrics and tear through a punky acoustic arrangement,” Diaz added.
“No planning, no overthinking, no analyzing allowed, just ripping into the songs. It was pure joy with no clear intention of releasing this project until recently. We started thinking about how incredible the name Enema Of The State is for a record,” she wrote of the joyously juvenile LP featuring the classic hits “What’s My Age Again?,” “All the Small Things” and “Adam’s Song,” among others.
Not for nothing, Diaz said the album’s once-silly, punny title is suddenly not so hilarious. “How the title is somehow so current and politically culturally socially ironic… How ridiculous it is to cover this record in 2025 when it feels like we need to flush the system and give our whole government a health check / gut check,” Diaz wrote. “There is so much going on at this moment across America and so much pain with ICE raids and false condemnations of hard working American citizens and undocumented immigrants. And maybe we could use this version of enema of the (garden) state to raise awareness and money for people in need of defense and aid in their right to live and work and breathe and be and stay on American soil.”
Diaz noted that while she was born in the U.S., her family is made up of Danish and Peruvian immigrants, like so many other American families whose roots trace back to other nations. “There is a lot here we have to love and protect and nurture,” said Diaz, who promised that “every penny” it generates will go to the Defending Our Neighbors Fund, a rapid-response non-profit that helps families, adults and children in need of advocates access legal representation and financial support in the midst of the Trump administration’s aggressive, nationwide immigration raids.
“They are providing immediate grants for trusted organizations to deploy legal advice and bond assistance,” she said of the organization. “For me, it’s about much more than a nostalgia for teenage rebellion against mom and dad. F–k ICE. Enema Of The State Forever.”
You can purchase the entire digital album now and listen to acoustic versions of “Don’t Leave Me” and “Anthem” for free here.
