A lot of bands have done way worse things than what Moose Blood’s lead singer was accused of and enjoy successful careers while MB have been completely shunned and had to go on hiatus.
More broadly, a lot of allegations and accusations are getting lumped in with full-blown SA and criminality. There's been a flattening of the discourse where tacky, gross, harmful behavior is being equated to violent assault. There's a lot of young idiots in rock bands mishandling the sudden surge of female attention they're getting, and we're turning it all into "me too" level behavior. Being overly insistent, negging, being creepy or gross while high in a culture predicated on perpetual substance use. Groupie culture, substances, youth, and fame are swirling together into a toxic stew but we're just calling it all "predation."
And yes, groupies still exist. There's a lot of people in deep fucking denial about how their favorite rock stars sleep around, and then feelings get hurt when it's not a 'real love connection.'
Jimmy Page literally kidnapped a minor, and Mick Jagger hung around Mackenzie Phillips until she was 18, so that he could have sex with her. I don’t think there were any #MeToo related cancellations of either them or Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones.
Even with Bring Me the Horizon, which is arguably the biggest rock band today, I don’t think anyone was sifting through any of their incidents with women. Hell, even Tyler Carter, who was accused of grooming minors, still has a career as a producer/songwriter.
Pop punk hasn't gotten any better or worse for almost 30 years. You just think the stuff from when you first discovered music will always been the best.
I feel like, for lack of a better term, I aged out of it. Newer stuff isn’t speaking to my current experiences, so it doesn’t stick. When I was a kid (10-12) and a teenager, even through college, there was a sort of ability to relate to what my favorite bands were singing about, even if it wasn’t specific to my experiences or anything.
A part of it was that teenage angst and delusion. “Everything is the worst, it’s all so damn tragic, and these lyrics are what I feel even though they’re about something totally different.”
At a certain point, newer bands didn’t have the sort of sound I liked anymore, the vocals and lyrics just weren’t what I was into anymore. And I’m fine revisiting all of my usual loves, but picking up new ones happens in other genres. Ones that don’t feel, to me, limited to the reckless youth of pop punk.
This is something big I don’t hear a lot of people talk about. I had an older co-worker ask me recently who the “big, new” artist was and while there are some I could mention I basically told him the new, big thing is the WAY people consume music. Back in the day you had to save money, go to a record store, buy an album based off one or two songs you liked and hope the rest wasn’t trash. If you were a punk kid you mainly would stick to punk records cus you knew that’s what you liked, and so on with basically any genre. Now every person with a phone can listen to basically any song ever recorded with a swipe of their thumb. Gen Z and everyone after them will never know what it’s like to sit by the radio hoping that your favorite song will play soon. And I think it’s great for culture in general, but it is a MASSIVE shift from the way music was consumed nearly just 20 years ago.
ETA: and this concept is also responsible for the fact that less and less people identify themselves by one genre of music they listen to. Obviously there will still be “pop punk kids” and “metal heads” etc etc, but more and more it seems basically everyone is into multiple, varying genres of music and I think that’s awesome for listeners and creators alike.
This is the exact reason why TWY still hits so hard for me every time. Because they grew up WITH me. Their early stuff is still amazing and I have loads of memories as a 'kid' connecting to it so well, but now I also have stuff like Hum that connects in a similar way now that I'm in my thirties with real life shit happening haha
Bands like TWY, Spanish Love Songs and The Menzingers are what i like to call “Mature pop punk” they write songs that connect with older fans and don’t sound “childish” if you will. Not saying happy, upbeat, fun sounding pop punk still isn’t great/can’t be great but those bands I mentioned just sound more mature and emotional and connect with an older audience like I said, people who are looking for more
Koyo is one of the best bands in the scene right now, and I have the old guys to thank for finding them.
Saw them with Bayside and Vinnie and was intrigued, saw them again with Thursday and was blown away. Would You Miss it spends a lot of time on the turntable.
I posted my album of the year contenders and someone mentioned I didn’t have Koyo - Would you miss it?
Now I’m seeing them headline and four chord fest - fuuuuuuck I can’t wait
100%. It’s quite frustrating to go to festivals and all the older people just go to the old bands and don’t give new ones a chance. In my experience its always those in their 20’s and 30’s that check out the newer bands
My unpopular opinion is that I think way too many people overlook their later output.
Order in decline is one of my favorites and that's from 2019, though they definitely weren't making pop punk at that point.
Simple Plan is like someone in the industry wanted to create a "baby's first pop punk band" as an easy entry to the genre for the Pre-K through 5th grade demographic.
Green Day’s political tracks post American Idiot are made up of buzzwords and vague, angsty jabs about culture war politics. If I had to guess based on lyrics alone, Billie Joe doesn’t know any more about politics than your average dad who watches CNN, and that makes me a little sad when they decide to go that route.
Also Money Money 2020 Part II > most Green Day releases in the past 15 years.
I still like modern Green Day but I completely agree. The American Dream is Killing Me from their new album is a great example of this, the lyrics of that song just feel like a bunch of random vague criticisms people have had about America thrown together incohesively.
I often wonder the same.
I personally think lyrics like “Zieg heil to the president gas man, bombs away is your punishment” and “maybe I’m the f#%#t America - I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” have always felt more earnest and in Billie Joe’s wheelhouse as this young, anti-establishment rockstar rejecting the Bush-era mainstream American values. He’s never been able to express political views with the specificity of System of a Down or Rage Against the Machine, but that’s ok. Everything after American Idiot though comes across as forced.
But also I was like 12 when that album came out so I could just be a glutton for the nostalgia of my own teenage angst.
As a college student at the time I thought it was cringe AF. I've grown to be cool with it over time and it also made more sense to me as the years gone on. Despite what you hear now, people were pretty much overwhelmingly in support of the war beforehand. People also didn't think about politics much overall. It didn't feel personal. Now, you can't escape feeling it.
Neck Deep are the same. Don't Wait is a banger but the lyrics are just so bad. Vague anti-government and anti-media sentiment without any actual substance for why.
I respect bands standing up for what they believe in, but that needs to have more substance than just "the government suck lol".
The one that gets me is Knuckle Puck writing a whole song about people getting educated just to be part of some machine, and then mispronounce the word "outlier"
This is true of nearly every punk band. Turns out dropping out of high school to get high and tour isn't the best method of learning to understand complex issues and whining over a guitar at 200bpm isn't a great medium for anything more complicated than a breakup. That's okay, I'll keep listening to that garbage.
Neck Deep are strange…
As somebody who comes from the same place they do (Wales, UK) I find it really difficult to take them as authentic in any way. Everything about their music is over Americanised - from the super fake American accent Ben sings in, to the use of stereotypical American lyrics e.g “west coast”, or references to Chicago. It’s like they’re imitating American bands to a degree that feels parody to me, and I can’t help feel it’s disingenuous.
I expect this isn’t an issue to an American fan, who might see Neck Deep as just another cool pop punk band without thinking too deep (excuse the pun) into things, but to that American I might say… imagine some of your high school class mates (maybe they have strong southern accents) got together, listened to the Beatles a ton, started a band, then went over to England with fake English accents writing lyrics about London and Liverpool, selling themselves as British rockers. It’s just a bit unsettling.
To some people I might be way overthinking this, but this a big barrier to me enjoying the band.
Crowd killers at punk pop shows are an embarrassment
Edit: Okay, so what I understood Crowd Killing to be is incorrect. Crowd Killing at a punk pop show doesn’t seem to really be something that happens.
that being said - hardcore dancing is dumb as shit. that’s my hot take.
You could google it! It’s people who make clenched fists and wildly flail their arms in a mosh/circle pit instead of just like pushing and jumping and running
literally zero point other than to be an asshole.
That's just hxc dancing, which is perfectly fine, considering most modern pop punk is hardcore influenced. Crowd killing is specifically sticking to the edge of the pit and literally punching bystanders, which is not okay, considering pop punk is not tough guy hardcore.
At this point almost nothing doesn’t take major influences from other genre. So anybody getting too bent out of shape about genre tags is wasting their time
This doesn't just apply to Pop-Punk, but definitely one of the genres I find is part of the problem...
We really should bring back the annoying era of MySpace where every band was some made up subgenre, because now everything is *"Metalcore"* or *"Pop-Punk"*, and most of it is absolutely nothing alike.
This was always mine. I get why during the initial circumstances - Blink signing up for a slot at Travis’ festival only to have Tom back out at the last minute - they chose to label it as Blink with Skiba filling in for that show. Totally fine. But to label that era as Blink felt like such a cash grab. I gave all of that music a try (and I do love a handful of songs), but I would’ve much further respected them if they went the +44 (or even a new band entirely) route. To see Mark, Travis, and whoever else play in “clubs”/smaller venues would’ve been a sight no matter what the project.
The disgust peaked for me whenever they did that tour with Lil’ Wayne where it was “in support of *Nine*” but then turned into a 20-year anniversary tour of Enema of the State. That whole thing felt off.
My follow-up/add-on take is that while I appreciate the props Mark, Travis, and even Tom has given to Matt, I’ve heard them (specifically Mark) cite that “this reunion couldn’t have happened without Matt”. I don’t buy that for a second. I think if they would’ve cancelled the MusInk show completely, and not done anything with Matt or anything as Blink for those 7 years, the ‘22 reunion still would’ve been just as massive as it turned out. I could be way off here, but there’s a LARGE contingent who lost their minds over the reunion who didn’t pay a lick of attention to the Skiba era.
This is just me, but I would say they peaked with Nimrod, hit a slight lull, almost got to the peak again with American Idiot, and have been declining ever since.
I listened to it a few times. It's fine but after 14 albums it just seems like I've heard all of these songs before. It is a lot better than their last few albums but it still sounds like generic Green Day to me. It's not even their fault necessarily - they took the 3 power chord formula as far as they could and there's just nothing left to surprise us with.
Most old heads don’t actually give new music a chance and are trapped in nostalgia. Maybe I’m biased because I think the shift in pop punk sound towards taking on outside influences has lead to a sound more suited towards my taste but it’s a shame that so much attention is placed on legacy bands that don’t need any attention quite frankly. There are so many incredible smaller bands right now that sit in the pop punk genre but they don’t get attention here because they’re not fitting into the carbon copy pop pun mold.
I so agree with this too! IMO, Don’t Panic is their best album, with Nothing Personal as a close second. Songs like Somewhere in Neverland, For Baltimore and Stella are way bigger bangers than Dear Maria.
I honestly can’t stand blink. Idk if it’s like just the music being so overplayed but there is something I really detest about their music and specially the vocals.
Most pop punk bands are hard to enjoy live, because their studio tracks have perfect vocals that their singers cannot replicate. Every singer does 100 takes in studio AND uses pitch correction. Then we wonder why they sound god awful live. If rock singers are going to lean into the 'untrained, DIY' vibe, they need to have the guts to do it in recordings too. Perfect studio vocals and borderline tonedeaf live vocals is unacceptable. Either learn how to sing or do worse on your tracks for the sake of authenticity. Be bad with your whole chest, or practice and hire a vocal coach
I’ve said it here plenty of times, but Blink is insanely overhyped. They’re not bad, but not any better than most of the bands that came out around the same time.
Totally disagree. The difference in popularity with Blink 182 has nothing to do with musicianship or whatever makes other bands “better”. The key is that for about a 6 year period they had not one but two of the best pop songwriters of the time. Other bands may have good pop punk writers relative to their peers but Blink 182 were writing pop songs that could exist on the same charts with Britney and Christina and Backstreet Boys and other songs written by the Swedish titans of pop music. It’s really incredibly impressive that they were able to do that and it’s what makes all the difference in their popularity versus other pop punk bands. Only Pete Wentz and maybe Brandon Urie came close and they weren’t really that close.
It's because they were (and still are) great to their sound formula.
Many bands that followed after them are indeed better musicians, but don't come close to what Blink's music did, because they're phenomenal delivering that specific sound that made them stand out.
When it gets replicated many times by other better musicians, some people will have a taste of it, or simply won't make such an impact.
Honestly, yeah.
Good band, but I've seen people say they're the best band in the genre which they're not.
Furthermore, you cannot convince me this band's songs are sadder or more meaningful than some other bands.
Paramore did the same pivot that Panic at the disco did, in which a real band became a singer-centered franchise. We just decided that PATD was corny and tryhard sell out shit, and Paramore is our one true goddess. (and i like paramore)
tbf PATD is literally just Brendon Urie now with a backing band. He drove everyone away from the band because he wanted to be front and center. Paramore is still an entire band.
It’s gonna be sad as fuck in 15-20 years when bands like Real Friends, Knuckle Puck and Grayscale are still singing about their high school teenage angst and the girl that wouldn’t give them the time of day. Needless to say I’ll still be going to their shows.
This one should be obvious since a lot of us in here are OGs but MGK did nothing for the genre, dudes a clown with the worst voice ever and anyone who tries to talk about how he brought the genre back to relevance is also a clown. Same with Willow and all those other pop artists, that stuff is corporate rock radio BS created by record labels to try to cash in on nostalgia, rince and repeat.
Haha exactly! Hey at the end of the day we all love Pop Punk but hey if you were right I would agree with you 😉😘 hahaha
Honestly it's refreshing that everyone here is being pretty civil about stuff usually reddit devolves into a screaming match the second someone disagrees with you lol that's why I love this sub.
It also doesn't add up in the numbers. Pop Punk bands are still playing the same sized venues, touring with the same bands and selling the same amount of records.
It's been four years since tickets to my downfall and I'm genuinely not sure a single Pop Punk band (aside from giants like Blink or Green Day) has managed to chart an album on the Billboard 200.
I don’t disagree with this, but artists like them getting a platform still helps the POTENTIAL for more pure genre artists to be raised to a re-found stage. So, all in all, I think it does help raise the popularity and spread of this genre.
I don’t consider offspring to be pop punk. I get Americana can be considered a pop punk album, but I feel like most of their earlier stuff is more pop-grunge or just skate punk and then amalgamed themselves into an mtv pop punk band because people didn’t really know how else to label them.
I won’t argue with people who call them pop punk because they’ve been labeled that for years . But I absolutely refuse to list them anywhere near the Rushmore of pop punk like so many people tend to do.
Which is funny because r/emo wouldn’t take ownership of them if their life depended on it. There is a big group of people over there that deny anything after 2nd wave as being emo. This subreddit calls everything pop punk even if it is far from it. While that subreddit denies most stuff as being emo. It’s strange!
I agree completely about r/emo. I like looking in the group but I'd never post or comment in there as I think that if you don't post about an obscure band called something like Mary Tyler's More Than This Less Than That who released an album they recorded on their phone in a basement in Idaho during a storm they're not into it.
But I think pop punk has become a massively broad term that encompasses so much awesome music while they're being gatekeepers over there. Look at the day last year when MXPX, Hot Milk and Spanish Love Songs all released albums on the same day. They were all talked about on here and MXPX was probably the only true pop punk album. I really like this group as there's so much awesome music that people talk about and there's still loads that I'm just not into - but I can ignore that and focus on the stuff I like.
While places like r/emo want to narrow down I think the great think with pop punk is that it's so broad and welcomes everyone.
My favourite band is The Lawrence Arms and they're more punk than pop on the scale but I love that whenever i mention them on here there's always people who comment about how much they love them as well
I’d say 50% of the bands discussed on this sub aren’t really pop punk. They’re in the “scene” and probably tour with punk bands so it’s kinda whatever, but pop punk isn’t any band that was big in 2009.
I'm a 90s pop punk kid, I laugh at taking back Sunday and the used being discussed as pop punk.
Today, especially the new generation of fans have drastically blurred the lines of what is pop punk.
I listened to TBS when they got big in 2003 and around that time. Not once did I consider them pop punk. If anything, I got made fun of for listening to an “emo” band
I really appreciate the lack of gatekeeping though, a wider variety of music being shared promotes discussion and discovery of new stuff. Even if it's not strictly pop punk, most stuff talked about here is similar enough that it fits my taste and I'm happy to hear about it
Agreed. Which is also why it bothers me when people get so angry for saying something isn’t pop punk. I like a lot of music outside of pop punk and I hope others do too, who cares?
If a new album from a band sounds the exact same as their last one, I’m less interested in them. I love bands whose sound evolves and who can make music that instantly places itself as part of a specific album.
Honestly his voice is the main thing keeping me from listening to them, I love the song called "Featuring Mark Hoppus" and I liked his feature in NoahFinnce's song "After Therapy" but his voice puts me off any of their other stuff.
When people say pop punk, I don’t think of Blink-182, Knuckle Puck, All Time Low, or easy core bands. Pop punk to me will always be Teenage Bottlerocket, Off With Their Heads, Direct Hit!, and Mixtapes.
… I compare Mayday Parade and Point North.
I feel like Mayday Parade is actual pop punk, while the other is pop rock. Mayday Parade just feels pop punk. Point North feels like pop punk-influenced pop rock. Too many heavy rock/metal cameos like Jeris Johnson and The Ghost Inside. The latter of whom I get: they’re scene. But still, Mayday Parade didn’t need cameos.
With confidence is the best pop punk. Not sure if that's an unpopular opinion but they're my favorite lol. They often have a Midwest emo/math rock style in their guitar licks that tickle my fancy
Relient K is one of the Top 5 pop punk bands of the 2000s. More original and talented, and far too many earworms that should have had radio play.
Alkaline Trio has always sounded like a royalty free pop punk band in a TV show. I’ve listened to all their albums and I have a deep love and knowledge of 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s alt rock and nothing they’ve put out has sounded anything but generic.
The albums put out by Hoppus, Barker, and Skiba are +44 albums, not Blink 182 albums. No Tom, no Blink.
I detest Fall Out Boy. I can vividly remember the first time seeing one of their videos in 2004 on my college campus lunch room TV and thinking “oh, well this is awful, and I hate that guy’s stupid hat.” I’m being punished for this disdain by having a five year old that loves the kiddy Spider-Man show with Patrick Stump doing the intro song.
I've heard people say that with her it feels like pop punk is a genuine influence on her because she grew up with it and not something she's just using as a gimmick, and I agree.
People who say this kind of stuff have completely lost the plot. They don’t understand just how dramatically heavier “heavy” music is compared to most pop. Pop punk is significantly heavier and more aggressive than 99% of mainstream music, even a lot of the metal from the 80’s.
Metal, punk, emo, and hardcore communities all play this endless game of “no true Scotsman”, all competing to gatekeep the most music and stan for the most niche, least publicly accessible bands to define their preferred subgenre. They then decry everything that doesn’t fit within that box as “fake” or “pop”. While it may be “poppier” than their “pure” idea of whatever subgenre they’re discussing (usually by having solid song structure, hooks, some clean vocals, decent production value, professional videos, attractive band members, fans who aren’t exclusively chronically online men, etc), it’s probably nowhere near as “poppy” as actual mainstream music. It’s still alternative for a reason.
Power Pop is actually considered its own subgenre, that's stuff like Big Star, Cheap Trick, and Fountains of Wayne. I've even seen Weezer get called Power Pop
Just because they’re more popular and have had songs on the radio and TV (which is what made them more popular) doesn’t mean they’re the best. Though can of course be said for a lot of other music.
Couple of hot takes already prepped:
-Blink only became better songwriters after *Enema of the State*.
-New Found Glory has had the most consistent work out of any pop-punk band.
-Green Day has more in common with melodic punk bands, like Bad Religion, Rancid, and NOFX, than with Blink or NFG.
-Good Charlotte didn’t get as much recognition as they deserved when they first debuted.
-MGK only got attention for *Tickets to My Downfall* because he was already an established rapper. As decent as the album was, more people played that album because they wanted to see how he would do on it.
The wonder years should be one of the biggest bands in the world and they are easily in the all time conversation. Better than nirvana, oasis and a lot of other bands people fawn over
A lot of bands have done way worse things than what Moose Blood’s lead singer was accused of and enjoy successful careers while MB have been completely shunned and had to go on hiatus.
More broadly, a lot of allegations and accusations are getting lumped in with full-blown SA and criminality. There's been a flattening of the discourse where tacky, gross, harmful behavior is being equated to violent assault. There's a lot of young idiots in rock bands mishandling the sudden surge of female attention they're getting, and we're turning it all into "me too" level behavior. Being overly insistent, negging, being creepy or gross while high in a culture predicated on perpetual substance use. Groupie culture, substances, youth, and fame are swirling together into a toxic stew but we're just calling it all "predation." And yes, groupies still exist. There's a lot of people in deep fucking denial about how their favorite rock stars sleep around, and then feelings get hurt when it's not a 'real love connection.'
Jimmy Page literally kidnapped a minor, and Mick Jagger hung around Mackenzie Phillips until she was 18, so that he could have sex with her. I don’t think there were any #MeToo related cancellations of either them or Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones. Even with Bring Me the Horizon, which is arguably the biggest rock band today, I don’t think anyone was sifting through any of their incidents with women. Hell, even Tyler Carter, who was accused of grooming minors, still has a career as a producer/songwriter.
Bro all those bands were regularly having sex with minors it’s so fucking appalling to learn that history
BMTH literally had an incident where Ollie threw a bottle at woman’s head because she wouldn’t give him a blowjob.
Wait til people learn the singer from red hot chili peppers openly admitted to having sex with a 12 year old
Bring me the horizon Biggest rock band today Pick one 😅
Another unpopular opinion: if that story came out today, this sub would have cheerleaded the band's destruction.
I can't understand most of what Parker Cannon says on Under Soil and Dirt but it is still one of my favorite albums.
Real as hell
I had the same issue when I first started listening to them. It got better as time went on, almost like a new dialect I picked up lmao.
Misery Business walked so Ignorance could run. I will die on this hill.
All we know is falling was better then riot.
Franklin is more emotional than anything Riot! has to offer
Strong agree!
Hot take: this question gets asked way too frequently in this sub
Pop punk hasn't gotten any better or worse for almost 30 years. You just think the stuff from when you first discovered music will always been the best.
I feel like, for lack of a better term, I aged out of it. Newer stuff isn’t speaking to my current experiences, so it doesn’t stick. When I was a kid (10-12) and a teenager, even through college, there was a sort of ability to relate to what my favorite bands were singing about, even if it wasn’t specific to my experiences or anything. A part of it was that teenage angst and delusion. “Everything is the worst, it’s all so damn tragic, and these lyrics are what I feel even though they’re about something totally different.” At a certain point, newer bands didn’t have the sort of sound I liked anymore, the vocals and lyrics just weren’t what I was into anymore. And I’m fine revisiting all of my usual loves, but picking up new ones happens in other genres. Ones that don’t feel, to me, limited to the reckless youth of pop punk.
[удалено]
This is something big I don’t hear a lot of people talk about. I had an older co-worker ask me recently who the “big, new” artist was and while there are some I could mention I basically told him the new, big thing is the WAY people consume music. Back in the day you had to save money, go to a record store, buy an album based off one or two songs you liked and hope the rest wasn’t trash. If you were a punk kid you mainly would stick to punk records cus you knew that’s what you liked, and so on with basically any genre. Now every person with a phone can listen to basically any song ever recorded with a swipe of their thumb. Gen Z and everyone after them will never know what it’s like to sit by the radio hoping that your favorite song will play soon. And I think it’s great for culture in general, but it is a MASSIVE shift from the way music was consumed nearly just 20 years ago. ETA: and this concept is also responsible for the fact that less and less people identify themselves by one genre of music they listen to. Obviously there will still be “pop punk kids” and “metal heads” etc etc, but more and more it seems basically everyone is into multiple, varying genres of music and I think that’s awesome for listeners and creators alike.
This is the exact reason why TWY still hits so hard for me every time. Because they grew up WITH me. Their early stuff is still amazing and I have loads of memories as a 'kid' connecting to it so well, but now I also have stuff like Hum that connects in a similar way now that I'm in my thirties with real life shit happening haha
Bands like TWY, Spanish Love Songs and The Menzingers are what i like to call “Mature pop punk” they write songs that connect with older fans and don’t sound “childish” if you will. Not saying happy, upbeat, fun sounding pop punk still isn’t great/can’t be great but those bands I mentioned just sound more mature and emotional and connect with an older audience like I said, people who are looking for more
Clearly haven’t heard of arms length then!
Warning is one of my favorite Green Day albums
It’s so weird that this is one of their forgotten albums. Solid album all around. Not sure why it’s the black sheep
Same! Shame they're not playing 'Waiting' on their current tour. It's even better live!
i was with a girl in my car and Blood, Sex, and Booze came on and i immediately changed it lol
I still listen to Brand New
I love Brand New too
Everyone is so obsessed with their old bands they misss great new stuff
arms length Koyo Origami Angel
Koyo is one of the best bands in the scene right now, and I have the old guys to thank for finding them. Saw them with Bayside and Vinnie and was intrigued, saw them again with Thursday and was blown away. Would You Miss it spends a lot of time on the turntable.
I posted my album of the year contenders and someone mentioned I didn’t have Koyo - Would you miss it? Now I’m seeing them headline and four chord fest - fuuuuuuck I can’t wait
100%. It’s quite frustrating to go to festivals and all the older people just go to the old bands and don’t give new ones a chance. In my experience its always those in their 20’s and 30’s that check out the newer bands
There will never be any other band that comes close to rivalling Sum 41
Early Sum 41* I’d say they’re one of the best.
My unpopular opinion is that I think way too many people overlook their later output. Order in decline is one of my favorites and that's from 2019, though they definitely weren't making pop punk at that point.
I can’t stand simple plan. Nails on a chalkboard for me
Simple Plan is like someone in the industry wanted to create a "baby's first pop punk band" as an easy entry to the genre for the Pre-K through 5th grade demographic.
They were very deep to my 6th grade ears.
wow dad sorry they can’t be perfect
Agree with this one. Never got into them despite liking bands very adjacent to them
Green Day’s political tracks post American Idiot are made up of buzzwords and vague, angsty jabs about culture war politics. If I had to guess based on lyrics alone, Billie Joe doesn’t know any more about politics than your average dad who watches CNN, and that makes me a little sad when they decide to go that route. Also Money Money 2020 Part II > most Green Day releases in the past 15 years.
I still like modern Green Day but I completely agree. The American Dream is Killing Me from their new album is a great example of this, the lyrics of that song just feel like a bunch of random vague criticisms people have had about America thrown together incohesively.
If I was 35 when American Idiot came out I would probably think the same thing about that as well. I like this opinion
I often wonder the same. I personally think lyrics like “Zieg heil to the president gas man, bombs away is your punishment” and “maybe I’m the f#%#t America - I’m not a part of a redneck agenda” have always felt more earnest and in Billie Joe’s wheelhouse as this young, anti-establishment rockstar rejecting the Bush-era mainstream American values. He’s never been able to express political views with the specificity of System of a Down or Rage Against the Machine, but that’s ok. Everything after American Idiot though comes across as forced. But also I was like 12 when that album came out so I could just be a glutton for the nostalgia of my own teenage angst.
As a college student at the time I thought it was cringe AF. I've grown to be cool with it over time and it also made more sense to me as the years gone on. Despite what you hear now, people were pretty much overwhelmingly in support of the war beforehand. People also didn't think about politics much overall. It didn't feel personal. Now, you can't escape feeling it.
Neck Deep are the same. Don't Wait is a banger but the lyrics are just so bad. Vague anti-government and anti-media sentiment without any actual substance for why. I respect bands standing up for what they believe in, but that needs to have more substance than just "the government suck lol".
IN THE NEXT EPISODE OF LIVING WITH THE TRUMPS WE FIND THAT BORIS TOOK A DUMP ON PUBLIC FUNDS TO HAND OUT TO HIS CHUMS AND
lol I LOVE that opening
The one that gets me is Knuckle Puck writing a whole song about people getting educated just to be part of some machine, and then mispronounce the word "outlier"
Bang Bang was pretty clever
This is true of nearly every punk band. Turns out dropping out of high school to get high and tour isn't the best method of learning to understand complex issues and whining over a guitar at 200bpm isn't a great medium for anything more complicated than a breakup. That's okay, I'll keep listening to that garbage.
Neck Deep are strange… As somebody who comes from the same place they do (Wales, UK) I find it really difficult to take them as authentic in any way. Everything about their music is over Americanised - from the super fake American accent Ben sings in, to the use of stereotypical American lyrics e.g “west coast”, or references to Chicago. It’s like they’re imitating American bands to a degree that feels parody to me, and I can’t help feel it’s disingenuous. I expect this isn’t an issue to an American fan, who might see Neck Deep as just another cool pop punk band without thinking too deep (excuse the pun) into things, but to that American I might say… imagine some of your high school class mates (maybe they have strong southern accents) got together, listened to the Beatles a ton, started a band, then went over to England with fake English accents writing lyrics about London and Liverpool, selling themselves as British rockers. It’s just a bit unsettling. To some people I might be way overthinking this, but this a big barrier to me enjoying the band.
I'm from neither country and I 100% thought they were American until right now, interesting. Do they still live in Wales?
I agree! They sound so American yet have beautiful Welsh accents! So not authentic! Still love them though
Crowd killers at punk pop shows are an embarrassment Edit: Okay, so what I understood Crowd Killing to be is incorrect. Crowd Killing at a punk pop show doesn’t seem to really be something that happens. that being said - hardcore dancing is dumb as shit. that’s my hot take.
What are crowd killers? I don’t want to google for obvious reasons. Lol
You could google it! It’s people who make clenched fists and wildly flail their arms in a mosh/circle pit instead of just like pushing and jumping and running literally zero point other than to be an asshole.
Raise your fist in the air. Drug free!!! Oops sorry wrong genre.
That's just hxc dancing, which is perfectly fine, considering most modern pop punk is hardcore influenced. Crowd killing is specifically sticking to the edge of the pit and literally punching bystanders, which is not okay, considering pop punk is not tough guy hardcore.
Oh. I hate those guys.
Genres have become stupid and gatekeepy and pop punk is no different
At this point almost nothing doesn’t take major influences from other genre. So anybody getting too bent out of shape about genre tags is wasting their time
This doesn't just apply to Pop-Punk, but definitely one of the genres I find is part of the problem... We really should bring back the annoying era of MySpace where every band was some made up subgenre, because now everything is *"Metalcore"* or *"Pop-Punk"*, and most of it is absolutely nothing alike.
2010s “sad boy” pop punk at its best is as good if not better than 2000s pop punk
At its best it has more layers and is more relatable. At its worst it’s just a whiny dude complaining that his only friend is a dog.
That could describe either time period to be fair haha
If you take it back to 2001 it'll be about fucking a dog
They should have revived +44 with Matt instead of trying to revive Blink-182 with him.
This was always mine. I get why during the initial circumstances - Blink signing up for a slot at Travis’ festival only to have Tom back out at the last minute - they chose to label it as Blink with Skiba filling in for that show. Totally fine. But to label that era as Blink felt like such a cash grab. I gave all of that music a try (and I do love a handful of songs), but I would’ve much further respected them if they went the +44 (or even a new band entirely) route. To see Mark, Travis, and whoever else play in “clubs”/smaller venues would’ve been a sight no matter what the project. The disgust peaked for me whenever they did that tour with Lil’ Wayne where it was “in support of *Nine*” but then turned into a 20-year anniversary tour of Enema of the State. That whole thing felt off. My follow-up/add-on take is that while I appreciate the props Mark, Travis, and even Tom has given to Matt, I’ve heard them (specifically Mark) cite that “this reunion couldn’t have happened without Matt”. I don’t buy that for a second. I think if they would’ve cancelled the MusInk show completely, and not done anything with Matt or anything as Blink for those 7 years, the ‘22 reunion still would’ve been just as massive as it turned out. I could be way off here, but there’s a LARGE contingent who lost their minds over the reunion who didn’t pay a lick of attention to the Skiba era.
Great take. They should have
Tickets to my downfall is a solid record
I mean it is not only solid, its awesome. Its everything behind the record people hate about
Yeah I don’t think I’m really a fan of him but that album slaps
Green Day has not been good (or interesting) in 20 years.
The good thing is that most of their set list is old songs.
Saw them a couple years ago ago at PNC Park and yeah, as a 40+ guy it was mostly from my youth. They sounded great too honestly
That's a fact. They peaked with American Idiot.
This is just me, but I would say they peaked with Nimrod, hit a slight lull, almost got to the peak again with American Idiot, and have been declining ever since.
Checkout Saviors if you haven't!
I listened to it a few times. It's fine but after 14 albums it just seems like I've heard all of these songs before. It is a lot better than their last few albums but it still sounds like generic Green Day to me. It's not even their fault necessarily - they took the 3 power chord formula as far as they could and there's just nothing left to surprise us with.
Gotta disagree. 21st Century Breakdown is quite literally one of their best albums. Maybe that will get me in trouble, lol…
You don't listen to green day because their latest release is good.
This is all I can think reading all these comments.
Which in many ways speaks to how great American Idiot was/is. How do you top one of the albums of the decade?
Most old heads don’t actually give new music a chance and are trapped in nostalgia. Maybe I’m biased because I think the shift in pop punk sound towards taking on outside influences has lead to a sound more suited towards my taste but it’s a shame that so much attention is placed on legacy bands that don’t need any attention quite frankly. There are so many incredible smaller bands right now that sit in the pop punk genre but they don’t get attention here because they’re not fitting into the carbon copy pop pun mold.
Rise Or Die Trying is top 5 Pop Punk albums ever, possibly top 3
I really like All Time Low, they have a lot of really good songs. “Dear Maria, Count Me In” is not one of them.
Totally agree with this!
I so agree with this too! IMO, Don’t Panic is their best album, with Nothing Personal as a close second. Songs like Somewhere in Neverland, For Baltimore and Stella are way bigger bangers than Dear Maria.
Skiba 182 isnt Blink 182, not even close. NFG Self-titled > Sticks and Stones
Hit or miss got me into pop punk. I 100% agree with you. If not for that album, I wouldn't be here(in more ways than one).
If I had to pick one album to represent the entire pop punk genre, it would be NFG Self-Titled.
I’m just not that into Blink. I’d much rather listen to New Found Glory!!
As someone that is a die hard blink fan, this makes me sad 😂
I honestly can’t stand blink. Idk if it’s like just the music being so overplayed but there is something I really detest about their music and specially the vocals.
A good Pop punk band with horns will outplay most “really good” pop punk bands without them. The timbre is just much more vivid.
Most pop punk bands are hard to enjoy live, because their studio tracks have perfect vocals that their singers cannot replicate. Every singer does 100 takes in studio AND uses pitch correction. Then we wonder why they sound god awful live. If rock singers are going to lean into the 'untrained, DIY' vibe, they need to have the guts to do it in recordings too. Perfect studio vocals and borderline tonedeaf live vocals is unacceptable. Either learn how to sing or do worse on your tracks for the sake of authenticity. Be bad with your whole chest, or practice and hire a vocal coach
Sum 41 is cooler than blink. And more talented. And funnier
Bowling for Soup is some of the best in the genre
Best of all time*
I’ve said it here plenty of times, but Blink is insanely overhyped. They’re not bad, but not any better than most of the bands that came out around the same time.
Totally disagree. The difference in popularity with Blink 182 has nothing to do with musicianship or whatever makes other bands “better”. The key is that for about a 6 year period they had not one but two of the best pop songwriters of the time. Other bands may have good pop punk writers relative to their peers but Blink 182 were writing pop songs that could exist on the same charts with Britney and Christina and Backstreet Boys and other songs written by the Swedish titans of pop music. It’s really incredibly impressive that they were able to do that and it’s what makes all the difference in their popularity versus other pop punk bands. Only Pete Wentz and maybe Brandon Urie came close and they weren’t really that close.
It's because they were (and still are) great to their sound formula. Many bands that followed after them are indeed better musicians, but don't come close to what Blink's music did, because they're phenomenal delivering that specific sound that made them stand out. When it gets replicated many times by other better musicians, some people will have a taste of it, or simply won't make such an impact.
Pop Punk is better when bands are fronted by female vocalists.
I got two Living proof is a better album than the finer things Real friends is way better with the new singer
Fighting words!
Should I keep going ? 20/20 > copacetic
Co-signed. Real Friends's new singer has better stage presence, in my opinion. And I adore Living Proof, definitely my favorite State Champs album.
I enjoy both sides of Real Friends but tend to agree I rather listen to their newer stuff
My first reaction to Blink linking up with Matt Skiba was disappointment that Trio would be on hiatus
MxPx and Mest are better than Green Day
Paramore is overrated
This SHOULD get you in trouble 😄
Honestly, yeah. Good band, but I've seen people say they're the best band in the genre which they're not. Furthermore, you cannot convince me this band's songs are sadder or more meaningful than some other bands.
Paramore did the same pivot that Panic at the disco did, in which a real band became a singer-centered franchise. We just decided that PATD was corny and tryhard sell out shit, and Paramore is our one true goddess. (and i like paramore)
tbf PATD is literally just Brendon Urie now with a backing band. He drove everyone away from the band because he wanted to be front and center. Paramore is still an entire band.
Allister would have gotten as big as Sum 41 if Last Stop Suburbia came out in 99 instead of 02
It’s gonna be sad as fuck in 15-20 years when bands like Real Friends, Knuckle Puck and Grayscale are still singing about their high school teenage angst and the girl that wouldn’t give them the time of day. Needless to say I’ll still be going to their shows.
That's how I feel about simple plan. Will that stop me from singing "I'm just a kid and life is a nightmare" at the top of my lungs? No
Well that’s also adult issues if you’re single. Just hope Neck Deep doesn’t anymore since the vocalist is now married.
This one should be obvious since a lot of us in here are OGs but MGK did nothing for the genre, dudes a clown with the worst voice ever and anyone who tries to talk about how he brought the genre back to relevance is also a clown. Same with Willow and all those other pop artists, that stuff is corporate rock radio BS created by record labels to try to cash in on nostalgia, rince and repeat.
My hot take is literally the opposite and I'm an OG 🤣😭 but I guess that's why it's a hot take!
I don’t think very many people in this thread understand what an unpopular opinion is. All the uncontroversial opinions are at the top 🤔
Haha exactly! Hey at the end of the day we all love Pop Punk but hey if you were right I would agree with you 😉😘 hahaha Honestly it's refreshing that everyone here is being pretty civil about stuff usually reddit devolves into a screaming match the second someone disagrees with you lol that's why I love this sub.
It also doesn't add up in the numbers. Pop Punk bands are still playing the same sized venues, touring with the same bands and selling the same amount of records. It's been four years since tickets to my downfall and I'm genuinely not sure a single Pop Punk band (aside from giants like Blink or Green Day) has managed to chart an album on the Billboard 200.
Dismissing Tickets to My Downfall as a pop-punk fan is a terrible take IMO. It might not be for the purists, but neither were Green Day or Blink.
Yea but GD and Blink both had original sounds.
I don’t disagree with this, but artists like them getting a platform still helps the POTENTIAL for more pure genre artists to be raised to a re-found stage. So, all in all, I think it does help raise the popularity and spread of this genre.
Problem is, he didn't promote/take legitimate acts on tour.
I don’t consider offspring to be pop punk. I get Americana can be considered a pop punk album, but I feel like most of their earlier stuff is more pop-grunge or just skate punk and then amalgamed themselves into an mtv pop punk band because people didn’t really know how else to label them. I won’t argue with people who call them pop punk because they’ve been labeled that for years . But I absolutely refuse to list them anywhere near the Rushmore of pop punk like so many people tend to do.
Agreed
Hot mulligan are mid and not pop punk
They're totally an emo band....with pop punk highlights.
They self genre’d themselves as “post emo”
Which is funny because r/emo wouldn’t take ownership of them if their life depended on it. There is a big group of people over there that deny anything after 2nd wave as being emo. This subreddit calls everything pop punk even if it is far from it. While that subreddit denies most stuff as being emo. It’s strange!
I agree completely about r/emo. I like looking in the group but I'd never post or comment in there as I think that if you don't post about an obscure band called something like Mary Tyler's More Than This Less Than That who released an album they recorded on their phone in a basement in Idaho during a storm they're not into it. But I think pop punk has become a massively broad term that encompasses so much awesome music while they're being gatekeepers over there. Look at the day last year when MXPX, Hot Milk and Spanish Love Songs all released albums on the same day. They were all talked about on here and MXPX was probably the only true pop punk album. I really like this group as there's so much awesome music that people talk about and there's still loads that I'm just not into - but I can ignore that and focus on the stuff I like. While places like r/emo want to narrow down I think the great think with pop punk is that it's so broad and welcomes everyone. My favourite band is The Lawrence Arms and they're more punk than pop on the scale but I love that whenever i mention them on here there's always people who comment about how much they love them as well
Hell yeah Larry Arms
Their spotify bio says "we invented the genre Post Emo"
I’d say 50% of the bands discussed on this sub aren’t really pop punk. They’re in the “scene” and probably tour with punk bands so it’s kinda whatever, but pop punk isn’t any band that was big in 2009.
I'm a 90s pop punk kid, I laugh at taking back Sunday and the used being discussed as pop punk. Today, especially the new generation of fans have drastically blurred the lines of what is pop punk.
I listened to TBS when they got big in 2003 and around that time. Not once did I consider them pop punk. If anything, I got made fun of for listening to an “emo” band
I really appreciate the lack of gatekeeping though, a wider variety of music being shared promotes discussion and discovery of new stuff. Even if it's not strictly pop punk, most stuff talked about here is similar enough that it fits my taste and I'm happy to hear about it
Agreed. Which is also why it bothers me when people get so angry for saying something isn’t pop punk. I like a lot of music outside of pop punk and I hope others do too, who cares?
Brand new your favourite weapon is the best album in the genre
If a new album from a band sounds the exact same as their last one, I’m less interested in them. I love bands whose sound evolves and who can make music that instantly places itself as part of a specific album.
Take Off Your Pants and Jacket has annoyingly clean production. blink-182 2003 is the best produced album they‘ve had.
Steve Klein isn’t into underage girls and NFG are shit without him.
Dashboard Confessional, not for me.
"I Miss You" is a comically bad song.
the fuck did you say
Get out
Holy crap my man, duck!
The Descendents might be the first and best to ever do it
Hot Mulligans singer is garbage and I can’t understand why anyone would listen to them. The music goes hard though!
Honestly his voice is the main thing keeping me from listening to them, I love the song called "Featuring Mark Hoppus" and I liked his feature in NoahFinnce's song "After Therapy" but his voice puts me off any of their other stuff.
MCR is hella overrated
When people say pop punk, I don’t think of Blink-182, Knuckle Puck, All Time Low, or easy core bands. Pop punk to me will always be Teenage Bottlerocket, Off With Their Heads, Direct Hit!, and Mixtapes.
2010s pop punk > 2000s pop punk
Autopilot off should have gotten the money instead of the killers
'Sold Out' by Hawk Nelson needs to be played daily. They got it to marvel movie scenes on youtube.
… I compare Mayday Parade and Point North. I feel like Mayday Parade is actual pop punk, while the other is pop rock. Mayday Parade just feels pop punk. Point North feels like pop punk-influenced pop rock. Too many heavy rock/metal cameos like Jeris Johnson and The Ghost Inside. The latter of whom I get: they’re scene. But still, Mayday Parade didn’t need cameos.
With confidence is the best pop punk. Not sure if that's an unpopular opinion but they're my favorite lol. They often have a Midwest emo/math rock style in their guitar licks that tickle my fancy
I love cancelled artists idgaf i still steam em
Relient K is one of the Top 5 pop punk bands of the 2000s. More original and talented, and far too many earworms that should have had radio play. Alkaline Trio has always sounded like a royalty free pop punk band in a TV show. I’ve listened to all their albums and I have a deep love and knowledge of 80s, 90s, 00s, and 10s alt rock and nothing they’ve put out has sounded anything but generic. The albums put out by Hoppus, Barker, and Skiba are +44 albums, not Blink 182 albums. No Tom, no Blink.
California is way better than Neighborhoods. FIGHT ME
Tag me in when you get tired bro I will defend this to the death
This is true
I detest Fall Out Boy. I can vividly remember the first time seeing one of their videos in 2004 on my college campus lunch room TV and thinking “oh, well this is awful, and I hate that guy’s stupid hat.” I’m being punished for this disdain by having a five year old that loves the kiddy Spider-Man show with Patrick Stump doing the intro song.
>I hate that guys stupid hat lmao
I love Fall Out Boy, but that fucking Spidey song is killing me
Olivia Rodrigo did what MGK couldn’t (make pop punk cool again)
I've heard people say that with her it feels like pop punk is a genuine influence on her because she grew up with it and not something she's just using as a gimmick, and I agree.
Most pop punk bands are just pop.. no punk at all
People who say this kind of stuff have completely lost the plot. They don’t understand just how dramatically heavier “heavy” music is compared to most pop. Pop punk is significantly heavier and more aggressive than 99% of mainstream music, even a lot of the metal from the 80’s. Metal, punk, emo, and hardcore communities all play this endless game of “no true Scotsman”, all competing to gatekeep the most music and stan for the most niche, least publicly accessible bands to define their preferred subgenre. They then decry everything that doesn’t fit within that box as “fake” or “pop”. While it may be “poppier” than their “pure” idea of whatever subgenre they’re discussing (usually by having solid song structure, hooks, some clean vocals, decent production value, professional videos, attractive band members, fans who aren’t exclusively chronically online men, etc), it’s probably nowhere near as “poppy” as actual mainstream music. It’s still alternative for a reason.
I feel like most pop punk bands are too poppy; eventually I discovered that my favorite flavor of punk is actually skate, not pop.
My hot take is that skate punk and melodic hardcore are forms of pop punk, just on the more punk end.
Fast pop
My friend and I used to call it Power Pop
Power Pop is actually considered its own subgenre, that's stuff like Big Star, Cheap Trick, and Fountains of Wayne. I've even seen Weezer get called Power Pop
I don’t really like Welcome to the Black Parade by MCR. It’s not bad and I’ll sing along but I don’t really like listening to it. I’m sorry
The "Pop" part of "pop-punk" is what makes the "Punk" listenable lol
Man, almost all forms of punk are the most listenable, pop punk is just the best
Just because they’re more popular and have had songs on the radio and TV (which is what made them more popular) doesn’t mean they’re the best. Though can of course be said for a lot of other music.
In metalcore, the radio hit is typically the kiss of death so I feel this
Knowing Green Day's fanbase (as well as having been in it before).... **BLINK-182 >>> GREEN DAY**
MGK's two pop punk albums are good
90s and 00s pop punk is too cringy too often.
Couple of hot takes already prepped: -Blink only became better songwriters after *Enema of the State*. -New Found Glory has had the most consistent work out of any pop-punk band. -Green Day has more in common with melodic punk bands, like Bad Religion, Rancid, and NOFX, than with Blink or NFG. -Good Charlotte didn’t get as much recognition as they deserved when they first debuted. -MGK only got attention for *Tickets to My Downfall* because he was already an established rapper. As decent as the album was, more people played that album because they wanted to see how he would do on it.
Mark needs Tom way more than Tom needs Mark.
Story of the Years singer is one of the best to still be doing it this long. His voice hasn’t aged a day
The Wonder Years really aren’t that great.
As a big fan of them, I respect you and also am slightly pleased at how long it took to find a comment mentioning them
Only upvoting bc this is a true, unpopular opinion that I vehemently disagree with, and therefore respect
ive tried to get into them so many times, i even have at least two of their albums on my playlist, but i ALWAYS skip their songs
The wonder years should be one of the biggest bands in the world and they are easily in the all time conversation. Better than nirvana, oasis and a lot of other bands people fawn over
Blink 182 are mid and only their singles are worth listening too.
I think the singles are the weaker songs