I've been a massive fan of pop-punk music since I was a kid. I credit that to my cousins; they always told me and my younger cousins what "good" music consisted of, and it always included Blink-182, Green Day, Fall Out Boy, Yellow Card, Jimmy Eat World, Paramore, The Offspring, I could go on, but you get the point.
As I grew older, my music tastes evolved, and pop-punk sadly died out, but it was one of those genres I always came back to, regardless of what was going on in my life. However, there wasn't new pop-punk punk music for me to jam out to until a couple of years ago when the genre's resurgence occurred.
In 2018, Colson Baker, better known as Machine Gun Kelly, or MGK for short, released his fourth studio album, Hotel Diablo. The album's last song, I Think I'm OKAY, was released before the album's release. The song featured Blink-182's drummer Travis Barker and singer YUNGBLUD.
This song was different than the others on the album. Kelly has been primarily known for sticking to his hip-hop/rap genre; this song provided an early 2000s pop-punk vibe. The song quickly became a fan favorite and has racked up 478,859,519 streams since its release. If you were to Google, who brought back pop-punk? Kelly appears in the results and is primarily credited with Barker for helping revive the genre.
With the revival of pop-punk, fan favorites like Blink-182, Avril Lavigne, and Paramore have released new albums within the past few years. It also paved the way for newcomers like Olivia Rodrigo with her debut album SOUR; the album included her hit song Good 4 U, which Rolling Stone described the song as "A sociopath-bashing rager that could pass for Paramore, X-Ray Spex, the Buzzcocks, Fastbacks, or countless other beloved bands."
Another artist also made her way into the pop-punk scene; WILLOW (Willow Smith) released Transparent Soul (the song title is all spaced out) and Gaslight featuring Travis Barker. Pop-punk is here to stay, for good; at least, that's my hope anyway. It entertains, cures me of my boredom, and gives me a good dose of nostalgia, all of which Adorno would frown upon.
Do you think pop-punk is having a resurgence? Or would you classify pop-punk today as an entirely different genre?
I would say the pop-punk of today is a different genre. I think because of the influence of today it seems to be more of a crossover with musicians, which I believe is good for music. Reason I say its different because I believe that people make music to make it popular not so much different. What Adorno predicted where everything in popular music becomes standardized. I think it becomes a problem when everything will eventually sound the same no matter the genre. I definitely enjoyed classic Pop-punk mainly because of the madden video game would feature such songs like Good Charlotte, Blink 182 and other musicians.
ReplyDeleteI think that the pop-punk we hear today is an adaptation of the original pop-punk music of the Y2K era. I grew up listening to Blink-182, Paramore, and Panic! at the Disco. I think that todays "pop-punk" artists probably did also, but they are not having the same vibe/emphasis that the early 2000's did. I think it is interesting to think about how we have current pop-punk artists who are trying to make it, but we are more likely to see out festivals like When We Were Young in Las Vegas to listen to all of the OG pop-punk bands we know and love. I think that this fact alone solidifies the idea that pop-punk today is closer to its own genre, than its origins.
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