Pop Punk Is Not Dead

Pop Punk is not dead: with its ever fickle relationship with main stream music, pop punk as a genre continues to rise and fall in popularity. While nothing could beat the pop punk of the late 90s/early 2000s (Green Day, Blink-182, Sum41…), there is a new wave of bands that are arguably reviving the genre.  To understand this current period of pop punk revitalization, it’s important to understand the origins of pop punk and how it evolved into the genre we know it today. Her Campus Point Park has compiled a timeline dating back to the 1970s to show our readers how pop punk has come of age: 

1970s – 1980s

Pop Punk is a genre blended together with hardcore music and faster, more melodic undertones that are popular in pop music. One of the first bands to really fuse together both genres was the Ramones in the ’70s. They paved the way for the start of pop punk with their Beach Boys/bubblegum pop influenced punk rock music. Other bands such as Bad Religion, Descendants, Generation X, and Buzzcocks also began to lay the groundwork for more contemporary pop punk. All of these bands had a more melodic approach to a harder punk sound.

1990s – Early 2000s

In the early 90s, pop punk music still wasn’t as popular, but bands such as Green Day were gaining more popularity. It was in the late 90s that pop punk music really began to break through and hit the surface, becoming more a part of mainstream music. It is arguably the most classic and best wave of pop punk music to date. Bands like Green Day, Blink-182, Sum41, Good Charlotte, New Found Glory, Simple Plan and others dominated the scene, both on the radio and in record sales. Independent record labels, such as the now well-known Epitaph Records, began to pop up everywhere. Even solo artists such as Avril Lavigne the “Pop punk princess” began to gain lots of mainstream success.Two albums from this era you can’t miss: Dookie by Green Day (1994) and Enema of the State by Blink-182 (1999)

Mid 2000s-2010

The lines of what defined “pop punk” became more obscure as more and more bands blended different sounds and genres together in addition. Band such as My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Paramore, and Taking Back Sunday were creating music with pop punk influence but with much darker, more serious undertones leading this era of music to be described as “emo”. While bands like these had lots of success in their own scene, because of the obscurity of the genre, “pop punk” began to fall in prominence, becoming not as big of a mainstream success as it had been in the previous decade. The fall of pop punk coincided with Fall Out Boy’s hiatus, which in its own way signified the end of this era.

2011-Present

Here you see the resurgence of Pop Punk as a genre, and its role in mainstream music. With the creation of bands like The Wonder Years, The Story So Far, Real Friends, Neck Deep, Modern Baseball, The Spacepimps and so many more you see it’s increasing popularity in society again. While the genre is still not as prominent as it was back in the early 2000s, you see these bands like these aiding in the genre’s revival. The bands of this period are re-defining the genre by getting back in touch with hardcore roots and fusing that with more melodic, fast tunes.

So strap on your snapbacks, put on your khakis and tie-dye, because pop punk is not dead, it’s back better than ever in full force.