Pop Punk Essentials

The initial furnace blast of mid-’70s punk in the U.S. and U.K. wasn’t all sonic chaos. Rabble-rousing bands Buzzcocks and Ramones cherry-picked popular music elements they loved—sticky melodies, lovely harmonies, buoyant tempos—and created pop-punk. The genre’s angsty, heartbroken lyrics would in time become a beacon for the bored teenagers who congregated in all-ages concert spaces, including 924 Gilman in Berkeley, California, to see bands such as Green Day. However, pop-punk’s pogoing rhythms and irresistible hooks also resonated with grown-up audiences: blink-182 hit big in the ’90s, and a mid-2000s mainstream wave swept up bleeding-heart romantics Fall Out Boy and Paramore, whose success would continue throughout the 2010s. Yet what’s most remarkable about contemporary pop-punk bands is how much they have in common with the early ones: as it turns out, buzzsawing riffs paired with insecurity-riddled sentiments are timeless.