I’ve been busy. Between adjusting to a new job, planning a wedding, and desperately tearing through The Sopranos before a Twitter meme ruins another major plot point, there hasn’t been much time to put pen to paper (or font to word-processor) on the newsletter. In words of Tony Soprano, after hearing about the death of a loved one, “What are you gonna do?”
A few things I have been doing involve sharing music—I’m still hosting the weekly Virtual Detention on WZBC 90.3FM and launched a second weekly program, Rat Fever, on the online station Uncertain FM. Those two shows add up to thee hours of home-spun and hand-selected tunes every week, not including the music curation and playlisting for Audiomack. I’m fortunate that these gigs allow me to explore music and engage with it in a professional setting, but they’ve also placed me on the front line of the latest major-label trend: the resurgence of pop-punk.
If you’ve listened to any radio station recently, you’ve likely heard a modern pop song with a prominent electric guitar—an instrument notably absent from the last decade. My college years were dominated by high-flying EDM anthems built on Macbook synthesizers, and the second half of the ‘10s swirled in trap-inspired hip-hop. But since the turn of 2020, we’ve experienced a deluge of pop-punk from major record labels, capitalizing on the genre’s newfound popularity inspired by American rapper Machine Gun Kelly and his album Tickets to My Downfall.
If you think this song sounds like a xerox of blink-182, you’d be correct: the band’s drummer, Travis Barker, performed on and produced the entire album. In fact, Barker has become the producer of choice for major labels and their artists interested in cashing in on the pop-punk revival:
Roc Nation || Willow - “Transparent Soul” (yes, Will Smith’s daughter)
Sony || KennyHoopla - “ESTELLA//” which hit #8 on US Alt
Universal Music Group || POORSTACY - “Hills Have Eyes”
Atlantic (Warner Records) || Sueco - “SOS”
These don't even scratch the surface of his 50+ credits in the past couple years, and the result is that all these songs…kinda sound the same: thick, palm-muted power chords, massive drums, and the sporadic telephone-filter vocal effect. Barker is on the way to becoming pop-punk’s Max Martin, where every rock song on the radio will ultimately be connected to him in some way—and good for him, his drums sound sick and he’ll be a richer man.
One of the more curious pop-punk phenoms of the past year has been Olivia Rodrigo, the Disney Channel star, who has turned into a chart-breaker seemingly overnight. I didn’t care much for “driver’s license,” but that’s probably because I’m almost 30 and the opening lyric “I got my driver's license last week” doesn’t hit the same when you’ve driven over 100,000 miles and blown out a tire at full speed on I-90 W. On the other hand, my cousin who just graduated high school? LOVES Olivia Rodrigo. Some songs are made for people of certain ages, and that’s OK by me. My cousin probably wouldn’t react the same way if The National’s “Mr. November” came on the stereo, but I would lose my mind.
Just as the hype around Rodrigo’s breakup ballad started to peter out, she followed it up with the smash-hit “good 4 u,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100.
Many astute listeners pointed out that the chorus sounds very similar to Paramore’s 2007 single “Misery Business,” which led to me gawking every time the song came on the radio. My fiancée was on the receiving end of many ill-tuned sing-a-longs where I tried to “prove” that the hook was a blatant rip-off and that Rodrigo is an industry plant whose sole purpose is to repackage ‘00s Tumblr culture for a fresh audience. I remember watching VH1 with my buddy Julian one afternoon and seeing the video for “crushcrushcrush” for the first time and thinking it was the coolest shit I’d ever seen. How could a Disney singer blatantly steal their edge from one of my favorite bands?
My fiancée’s response? “Nick, who cares? What are you gonna do?”
The realization I’ve come to isn’t novel or insightful, but one that we all need at some point in our lives: I am not the center of the cultural universe, and am no longer the target audience of youth media. This new era of pop-punk simply isn’t designed for me, and it shouldn’t be. My time of teenage angst is well past its expiration date, and I’ve entered a new era of being passionate about lumbar support and properly stored leftovers. I don’t think it means I’m boring, it just means I have other things on my mind than the sequence of notes in a pop song. Further, none of this is new: major record labels have been selling “rebellious” culture to teens and young adults since the 1950s, and every generation has had their own version of pop-punk, each just a slicker reincarnation of the last.
The Sex Pistols were formed in the ‘70s to promote a clothing store and ripped off Iggy Pop. The Replacements fused classic punk with better hooks and debauchery in the mid ‘80s. blink-182 took the ‘90s by storm after inserting those same hooks into wacky music videos (something The Replacements famously refused to do). In the 2000s, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance brought Hot Topic record profits, and Paramore wasn’t even a scrappy punk band, but rather an Atlantic Records artist released through the smaller Fueled By Ramen label for better marketing.
[Their music] was supposed to come out on Atlantic Records but instead we took it to Fueled by Ramen. It was the marketing department at Atlantic that decided not to put their name on the record, therefore not associating a huge label with the record. We all knew Fueled by Ramen was something special and had a “niche” market so it worked.
- Jeff Hanson, former manager
Regardless, it is weird to see your youth get dusted off and put up for sale, because there’s an urge to take part in something that was once yours. These are the same songs, clothes, and life experiences that defined our adolescence 15 years ago. Through Olivia Rodrigo and Travis Barker, we are tempted to vicariously relive our youths with the wisdom of age. But I’m almost 30, and I can’t hang in the pit with kids born in this millennium—not only would I finally tear my ACL, but I’d look like Mac crashing the high school party in the first season of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
This summer, especially as the country begins to reopen, remember to support local and independent artists who didn’t have the backing of a major label to help them through the past year. Log off, get outside, and don’t worry about a Disney artist maybe borrowing a melody from an Atlantic Records band; because ultimately, in the words of Tony Soprano, after being told Johnny Sack won’t budge on the esplanade deal, “What are you gonna do?”
MUSIC || MUSIC || MUSIC
five songs for every summer playlist!
The Chaotic Bop:
The Sentimental Sunset Drive:
For Sweat-fueled Swagger:
For Breezy Day Drinking
For Fans of The Counting Crows