So You Thought Pop Punk Was Over? This is Why the Angsty Music and Style is Trending Again
You may have put away your Vans and striped fingerless gloves too soon. Sure, it's not the early 2000s anymore, but the 2020s have arrived and so has a new iteration of pop punk.
Throughout musical history, the genre of pop punk has evolved alongside changing cultures and styles. Going back to the late '70s and early '80s, bands like Buzzcocks and The Ramones brought a new sound on the scene that combined catchy pop structure with an adolescent, anarchic punk ethos. This laid the foundation for the mainstream success of pop punk in the mid-to-late 1990s, with bands like Greenday, Blink-182, and The Offspring, a success that continued into the early 2000s with artists like Avril Lavigne, All Time Low, Fall Out Boy, Good Charlotte, and more.
And as with the genre's legacy, which saw designers like Vivienne Westwood pioneering a new kind of punk fashion, pop punk became more than just a musical style but also an aesthetic. From skater to hip hop fashions, the pop punk look was a blend of different genres, hinged on a youthful rebellion of corporate lifestyle—mixing dress shirts, blazers, and skinny ties with sneakers, spiky hair or long fringe, and lots of chunky jewelry, tattoos, and piercings.
The distinctive style wasn't just repped by pop punk musicians, but made its way onto high fashion runways and in movies and TV throughout the years. Its influence on fashion and pop culture emerged just as online communities of early social media platforms like Myspace were growing, becoming one of the first online subcultures.
However, as the 2010s rolled in, pop punk seemed to take a backseat to dance-focused pop hits on mainstream radio. There was still a subculture following for the genre, but its bands didn’t headline big music festivals and its fashion turned obscure. But not for long.
At the end of the 2010s, the tide shifted as SoundCloud emo rap began to gain mainstream momentum. Young acts like Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert, and Juice WRLD credited pop punk as their sources of influence. (Lil Uzi Vert once cited Paramore’s Hayley Williams as his biggest musical inspiration). The distinct sound of this iteration of emo rap based itself on blending pop punk instrumentation with trap beats and hip hop style. And with this, these artists brought back pop punk’s adolescent angst to the music scene, injecting the genre with new life for Gen Z listeners who weren't old enough to remember the first iteration in the early 2000s.
And that was only the beginning. Musician and rapper Machine Gun Kelly tweeted in December 2019 that his next release was going to be a "pop punk album." In 2020, he lived up to his promise, releasing his fifth studio album, Tickets to My Downfall. With painted fingernails and a pink electric guitar, Machine Gun Kelly blended tropes of pop punk fashion and style with hip hop and contemporary beats and production.
He told Kerrang!, “I didn’t ‘switch genres;’ I’m versatile, and the wall isn’t boxed in."
Tickets To My Downfall debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 Chart, clearing the way for this new version of pop punk to be mainstream music again.
Part of the reason this resurgence is working is its validation from 2000s pop punk legends, like Travis Barker, drummer for Blink-182. Barker has been at the forefront of this new era of pop punk, collaborating with new generation of artists like Yungblud, Trippie Redd, TikTok’s Lil Huddy, as well as Machine Gun Kelly (in fact, Barker not only plays drums on Machine Gun Kelly’s tracks but also executive produced his 2020 album). When music staples like Barker put their stamp of approval on these projects, it gives credence to younger acts, while at the same time giving 2000s pop punk a new life for listeners who may not have known musicians like Barker and Blink-182 before.
As it often is, the Internet has been instrumental in making this resurgence gain momentum. As Y2K style booms on TikTok, the platform has also been huge for giving new life to 2000s pop punk bands. Trends that use music from acts like All Time Low, Simple Plan, and Paramore are going viral among an audience of mainly 16 to 24-year-olds, creating both nostalgia and a new love for music released nearly two decades ago. As of this month, over 460 million videos on TikTok are tagged #poppunk. Moreover, elements of pop punk fashion can be seen within popular online aesthetics, like e-boy and softboy style.
This virality has a domino effect both on and off the app. It often leads to these artists to climb back onto the charts, re-release versions of their famous tracks, and make new material for the first time in years. In the first months of 2021, All Time Low released new track “Monsters” featuring Blackbear and Demi Lovato, experimental rapper Mod Sun collaborated with Avril Lavigne on his new song “Flames,” and Hayley Williams said that she's "ready for the next Paramore album," showing just how 2000s pop punk can cross over to mainstream pop and hip hop in this new age of music.
Genres of music shapeshift and refigure themselves all the time, as production, instrumentation, and culture evolves. Maybe pop punk was never really dead, like some may have thought, just laying dormant, in the background as a subculture and a subtle influence on artists of other genres over the past decade. Now, it's back on top in one form or another, mixed and merged with contemporary trends, finding a new life with a generation online. And that's what the punk ethos has always been about: rebelling against established music indstry norms, refusing to be boxed into one particular genre, and always an integral part of youth culture.
What's next for the genre? With more and more established and emerging acts adopting the sound and style, and 2000s pop punk bands collaborating with newer artists of a variety of genres, there's no doubt you'll be hearing more pop punk in the near future.
