A Brief History Of 21st Century Pop-Punk, From MySpace To Tumblr To TikTok

The #1 single in America is a pop-punk song. With “good 4 u,” Olivia Rodrigo has become the latest in a string of artists to venture into the resurgent genre. The track marks an important point in the style’s latest mainstream comeback: Now that the biggest pop star of the moment has released a pop-punk hit, without rebranding herself as a pop-punk artist, it’s safe to say that pop-punk is pop again. (Predictably, “good 4 u” is currently all over TikTok.) “good 4 u” is not the first pop-punk song to hit big in the last year. 24kGoldn and iann dior’s “Mood,” which combines multiple genres including pop-punk and hip-hop, posted eight nonconsecutive weeks at #1 on the Hot 100 last winter. Another pop-punk/hip-hop crossover hit was All Time Low’s “Monsters,” featuring blackbear, which spent 18 weeks at #1 on alternative radio — the best-charting track for the Baltimore band in their 18-year career. And of course, Machine Gun Kelly’s pop-punk album Tickets to My Downfall debuted atop the Billboard 200, becoming the biggest release of the former(?) rapper’s career. The current wave of pop-punk can be broken down into a few different groups. The first is the bands that…
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