Pop Punk

Primary Stylistic Influences (70s Punk):

Punk Rock, Power Pop, Pop Music, Alternative Rock

Secondary Stylistic Influences (70s Punk):

Hardcore Punk, Post-Hardcore, occasional Rockabilly, Surf Music, Glam Rock, Grunge and New Wave Music influences

Pop Punk is Punk Rock at its most accessible.

Perhaps the first ever Pop Punk band were The Ramones, who melded the simplicity of rock'n'roll with breakneck speed, but maintained enough pop sensibilities to achieve great acclaim and cult status.

Bands like this played a large part in influencing Green Day, who premiered at 924 Gilman Street, Oakland, a renowned all ages venue. Before long, the radio was full of bands like blink-182 and Sum 41. After the mainstream success of Pop Punk, certain parts of the punk subculture started applying a "Pop Punk, not Punk" mentality to the genre, claiming that putting the style of music for sale was an anti-punk action and therefore not "true" punk.

During the mid-2000s, Pop Punk largely supplanted the late '90s-to-early '00s Boy Band craze. Young female listeners flocked to pop punk bands for largely the same reasons why they were into boy bands. They weren't without detractors, but since they were formed organically, not by a label, and actually wrote their own songs and played their own instruments, they had much more artistic credibility than boy bands ever did, and were much more appealing to males.^note

Today, Pop Punk is past its peak in terms of commercial success, though is still a fairly active genre if you know where to look. Recent pop punk acts such as Man Overboard are insistent that pop punk is required to be defended at all times, mainly from jerky hipsters and elitist hardcore punkers. For more information on this new scene check out defend pop punk which is the modern form of the genre (containing elements of melodic hardcore and emo)

In order to dodge the classification, many Pop Punk bands claim to be "Power Pop" instead. Don't believe them. There is also some overlap with the Emo genre which combines elements of this with post-hardcore and emotional relationship oriented lyrics. Although many bands are resistant to the label due to the internet giving it negative connotations. Form your own opinions on whether a band is emo or not, it really doesn't matter in the long run.