Is Pop Punk Dead?

Pop Punk’s Not Dead was the name for New Found Glory’s 2014 tour, the genre thrived throughout the 90s with bands such as Green Day and Blink 182 receiving mass exposure. This continued into the noughties but of late many of the pop punk bands that defined the emo youth have been edging more into the mainstream, bands like Paramore and Fall Out Boy have hit the number one spot in both the billboard chart and the uk top 40, with the latter writing songs for hit films like Big Hero 6 and Ghostbusters. The question remains, is pop punk still viable as a genre, or are we sick of hearing about getting rejected and kids leaving their hometowns?

The “new wave” of pop punk that arose around 2010 differentiates itself from the old one, lending more from the emo genre than from pop with darker and more mature lyrics. Bands like The Wonder Years and The Story So Far have captured the feelings of the disaffected youth just like their predecessors before them. Pushing the genre to a much more aggressive tone, and certainly a far cry from “Sugar We’re Going Down Swinging” but it’s pop punk nonetheless, it just required a change to stay relevant. A large majority of the “original” pop punk fans have moved on, to heavier genres or to more mainstream music and the genre itself is looked down upon by many, those who progressed to the heavier music will make remarks that the music is good in your early teens but shouldn’t you have moved on by now? The sentiment remains fairly strongly that pop punk is seen as childish and a stepping-stone towards finding interest in so called “real music”. The naysayers perhaps don’t realize just how widely influential the genre is with Facebook groups such as UK Pop Punk and Defend Pop Punk (a reference to band Man Overboard) accumulating more than 30,000 members globally. For many in the social media age this is where people now go to find new music, as well as discussing the “glory days” of the genre. Sometimes these groups lay quiet, most posts being people new to scene “I just discovered Neck Deep, can anyone recommend similar artists?” posts left unseen but when a big event occurs, such as the UK festival Slam Dunk or the announcement that Matt Skiba is to replace Tom Delonge in Blink 182, they become hotbeds of activity for fans old and new.

Perhaps the era of pop punk is dying, long “hiatuses” and breakups of old favourites seem rife but it’s refusing to go quietly and with the emergence of bands such as Roam, As it Is and Trash Boat quickly gaining traction, an eventual end to the genre seems a long way off.