Blink-182 has a new album out.
This isn't news anymore, the album came out in July, and it was a big deal then. Earlier this year, Simple Plan and Good Charlotte came out with new albums, The All-American Rejects have one in the works, and Sum-41's coming out with one in October. If My Chemical Romance would rise and Fall Out Boy would embrace their former sound, it would be 2005 all over again.
These aren't the only pop-punk bands by any means; in the past few years there have been new bands coming out with new music, but by about 2008 or 2009, pop-punk's meaning changed. The main feature with most of the bands mentioned above (The All-American Rejects, for the most part, being an exception) is that they keep a punk sensibility about their lyrics. The newer pop-punk bands have lost that — they still have bouncy guitar and harder drums than pop, but none of the songs have that feeling — that "I'm angry. I'm obstinate. I'm going to break something" feeling.
Punk has always been a genre that rebels against something. From rebelling against wars to discrimination, to the metal-punk hybrid otherwise known as grunge in the '90s with Nirvana and Soundgarden, post-punk in the '80s and '90s with bands like Bad Religion and Pennywise, punk has been a part of the popular music scene since the early '60s.
While rebelling against wars and discrimination as the original punk did and the societal disgust that post-punk excels in, pop-punk makes it personal and whiny and indignant.
Simple Plan is, I think, the easiest example of this — songs such as "Shut Up" are about mouthing off to authority, being your own person, and not doing what people expect just because they expect it.
Good Charlotte did the same thing with "The Anthem" and Sum-41, who embrace metal roots as well as punk, setting them the most heavily in the post-grunge genre, has a long history of mouthing off in songs such as "Fat Lip" and criticizing society and pop culture in their songs, old and new - especially in their new music video for "Fake My Own Death."
And then there's Blink-182. It's funny that the most popular of these bands is perhaps the band that doesn't quite have the same kind of disgust for society, the popular songs for Blink-182 are songs like "All the Small Things" and "What's My Age Again," which can be described as more fun than critical. But that's another quality of pop-punk, where it really devolves away from punk — the genre embraces the 'pop' side with fun party anthems that don't quite lose the punkish charm.
This mixed with the fact that singers of the genre have exclusively whiny voices — this and the age of the bands are why The Offspring and Green Day have always been stuck between post- and pop-punk - because of the teenage angst that is vital to the pop-punk sound. It's not all exclusively male, either - Avril Lavigne, pop-punk princess of 2004, has had her moments with songs like "Sk8er Boi" and her iconic tie-and-tanktop outfit.
But it's not just "this girl doesn't like me" anymore. It's not Hot Chelle Rae and Five Seconds of Summer, because the kings of pop-punk are back. Because Blink-182 is back to pounding out of speakers and while Good Charlotte sings that they "Looked outside to see it's not 2003," it might as well be with Simple Plan whining about an opinion overload and both ballads and harder rock songs coming from Sum-41.
In terms of genres of punk, pop-punk evolving into something completely trivial is the one thing that could have killed the genre. Instead of getting lighter, it lost its soul. It lost what made it punk in the first place — instead of listening to pop-punk and hearing the school's outcast, you heard someone who has always fit in, and the very essence of punk rejects fitting in. You take that away from punk and it's just alternative rock.
And hey, nothing wrong with alternative rock. But when it comes to music, I'd rather listen to a whiny thirty-something sing about being alone than listen to a fairly attractive twenty-something sing about having a hope with the girl of his dreams.
