Is Pop Punk Cool Again?

Pop punk at the time dominated the airwaves, and experienced anyone dashing to don plaid shirts and colored Converses. But, in the 2010s, pop punk saw a constant drop in its attractiveness as dance-pop music took in excess of the mainstream. Now adhering to the rise of the e-boy subculture and the insurgence of emo rap, pop punk has, unsurprisingly, created its way again to pop society. 

Pop punk’s revival has been ushered in by equally mainstream artists and option rock teams, each of whom have a blend of previous and new artists in the style pushing pop punk back into recognition. Mainstream artists that have heralded the new cycle of pop punk involve Machine Gun Kelly, Avril Lavigne, Olivia Rodrigo, and Willow Smith. One more essential large title in the revival of pop punk is Travis Barker, the previous drummer of pop punk legends Blink-182. On the choice aspect of items, groups these types of as Fulfill Me @ The Altar and Pinkshift have also played a job. 

All through the 2000s, when pop punk was in its heyday, its seem permeated into several aspects of pop society, with theme tunes like “What’s New Scooby-Doo?,” “6Teen,” and “Total Drama Island.” On the Disney aspect of matters, “Freaky Friday” sees Lindsey Lohan’s character adopting an Avril Lavigne-esque aesthetic even though currently being a component of a pop punk band, and Lohan’s track “Drama Queen (That Woman)” from “Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen” also has some pop punk elements to it.

These new artists benefit from the pop punk sound for an instant relationship to their Gen Z/millenial fanbases, who had pop punk as a distinguished sound of their childhoods.

In addition, the revival, in part, owes its success to TikTok and the nostalgia-stuffed culture of the 2020s. TikTok’s place as the latest, baddest, frontrunning social media system has given it reign in excess of pop lifestyle and present-day trends, so the application experienced a substantial effects on pop punk’s rise from the grave. In recent yrs, various developments on TikTok have created use of tunes from noteworthy pop punk bands this kind of as Paramore, All Time Small, and Basic Strategy, and TikTok creators have started foraying into the style on their own. For case in point, Jxdn launched his have pop punk new music in February 2020, and Lil’ Huddy did the same the pursuing calendar year. The 2020s have been dominated by a nihilism and angst thanks to the pandemic, and this best storm of political and cultural distress  has built pop punk come to feel applicable all over again.

Pop punk’s rise from the dead is all that much more enjoyable thanks to how it is been changing the makeup of performers in the style. Back again in the day, pop punk was dominated by straight white gentlemen with mediocre vocals usually singing about girls not liking them back again. In direct contrast, this revival has witnessed much more females and men and women of colour mounting to prominence in the genre, and increasing its audiences and horizons as a final result. Modern-day pop punk receives to benefit from more artists who are making extra lyrically persuasive pop punk audio with excellent vocals to match, and listeners get to working experience a refined, updated version of what they knew and loved from their pasts. 

Regretably, with pop punk creating its comeback now and the cyclical pattern of common audio, that implies we may perhaps only be a couple yrs shy of seeing scene occur again. I personally really do not know if I have it in me to endure a new cycle of “Rawr XD,” but I’m glad to have pop punk again for as long as we get it.