- Punk Rock, Power Pop, Pop, Alternative Rock (since 1990s)
- 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.
Other bands, namely the Descendents, played a significant part in the influence of bands in Southern California who made up the 90s Punk Revival - Bad Religion, Pennywise, NOFX, The Offspring, Rancid. Many of these bands were also part of a subgenre called Skate Punk, which combined pop punk elements with Thrash Metal riffs, and as the name suggest were associated with skateboarding subculture.
Bands like this played a large part in influencing Green Day, who premiered at 924 Gilman Street, Oakland, a renowned all ages venue, and went on to break the genre into the mainstream with their signature album Dookie. Later on, blink-182's breakthrough with Enema of the State would bring the genre even more mainstream success, with their ultra-glossy production and bubblegum infused emphasis on the 'pop' being widely imitated by the artists who came after. 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, a mentality that would become especially pronounced after the release of Enema of the State.
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
In the 2010's, Pop Punk had passed its peak in terms of commercial success, though was still fairly active in the underground. 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, as part of a larger scene termed Defend Pop Punk, incorporating elements of melodic hardcore and emo. "Easycore" is another development that fuses the genre with melodic hardcore and metalcore; the genre was largely created by A Day to Remember and Chunk! No, Captain Chunk!, and while the former has since grown into a major act, the easycore genre itself largely fizzled out by the mid-2010s, with only I Prevail finding anywhere close to the success of A Day to Remember. In The New '20s, however, a significant revival movement cropped up through social media platforms such as TikTok, and artists such as Machine Gun Kelly and Olivia Rodrigo started incorporating pop punk into their music.
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.
The Sundae has divided pop-punk into seven ages: The Blueprint (0-1993 - melodic punk like the Ramones, Buzzcocks); The Big Bang (1994-1999 - formative music like Weezer, Green Day); Y2K (2000-2003 - TRL-bait commercial punk like blink-182, Sum 41); the Emo era (2004-2008 - post-American Idiot conceptual fare like Panic! at the Disco, My Chemical Romance); the New Administration/Retreat (2009-2012 - a last hurrah for the style, Paramore, The Wonder Years); "Pop Punk Is Over" (2013-2018 - existing bands diversify from the style) and the Pop-Punk Revival (2019-present - Millennial/Zoomer pastiche of the genre, Olivia Rodrigo, Machine Gun Kelly).
Bands and artists generally agreed to be pop-punk include:
- 5 Seconds of Summer (the most successful pop punk band in the 2010s, though that's largely due to them being photogenic young men playing for female listeners. Note that they aren't technically a Boy Band, but their marketing targets largely the same demographic for the same reasons.)
- A Day to Remember (along with melodic metalcore, and a likely Ur-Example for "easycore")
- The Academy Is...
- The Adicts
- AFI as of "Crash Love"
- Alkaline Trio
- ALL
- All Time Low
- The All-American Rejects
- American Hi Fi
- An Cafe
- Area 11
- Ken Ashcorp
- The Ataris
- Bad Religion (combine this with Hardcore Punk)
- Travis Barker (best-known as the drummer for blink-182 but also in his own right a significant figure in the genre's New Twenties revival as a record producer)
- Billy Talent
- blink-182 (mixed with more traditional Alternative Rock since the self-titled album. Also the Trope Codifiers for the very glossy and even more pop-friendly side of the genre that would dominate the 2000s)
- Bowling for Soup
- Boys Like Girls
- Brand New (early work; started becoming less prominent on Deja entendu before they completely moved away from the genre starting with The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me)
- Bunkface
- Busted
- Buzzcocks (one of the key Trope Makers for the genre alongside the Ramones)
- The Cab
- Cake
- Charli XCX
- Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! (easycore)
- Cobra Starship
- Coheed and Cambria (mixes this with Progressive Metal)
- Crimpshrine
- Crystalyne
- DAY6
- Dave Days
- Descendents
- The Dickies (one of the earliest examples to form. Also New Wave.)
- Die Ärzte
- Doll Skin
- Ellegarden
- Eve 6
- The Exploding Hearts
- 2003 - Guitar Romantic
- Face To Face
- Fall Out Boy
- Falling in Reverse
- Fastbacks
- Forever The Sickest Kids
- Four Year Strong (easycore)
- The Get Up Kids (also falls into second wave Emo Music, being one of the Trope Makers for the 'emo-pop' subgenre)
- Gob
- Good Charlotte
- Good Kid
- Mckenna Grace
- Green Day (arguably the genre's Trope Codifier)
- 1994 - Dookie
- 1995 - Insomniac
- 1997 - nimrod.
- 2000 - Warning:
- 2004 - American Idiot
- 2009 - 21st Century Breakdown
- 2016 - Revolution Radio
- Guttermouth
- Hawthorne Heights
- Hey Violet
- Hüsker Dü
- Offshoot band Nova Mob count as well.
- I Prevail (easycore)
- Icon for Hire
- Isocracy
- Jawbreaker
- Jhariah
- Kamikazee
- Kenickie
- A Kiss Could Be Deadly
- L33tStr33t Boys
- Lagwagon
- Avril Lavigne
- Lemonheads
- Less Than Jake (whenever they're not dabbling with ska)
- Lit
- Maggie Lindemann
- The Lookouts
- Machine Gun Kelly (starting with Tickets To My Downfall)
- 2020 - Tickets To My Downfall
- Man Overboard
- Mae Shi
- Marianas Trench
- Mayday Parade
- Meet Me At The Altar
- MOD SUN
- Motion City Soundtrack
- The Movielife
- My Chemical Romance
- MxPx
- Neck Deep
- Nerf Herder
- New Found Glory
- New Politics
- NOFX
- The Offspring
- 1994 - Smash
- Pain
- Pale Waves (starting with Who Am I?)
- Panic! at the Disco
- 2005 - A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
- Paramore
- Patent Pending
- Pennywise
- Pinhead Gunpowder
- Plain White Ts
- Tyler Posey
- The Presidents of the United States of America
- Ramones (well, they started it)
- 1976 - Ramones
- 1977 - Leave Home
- 1977 - Rocket to Russia
- 1978 - Road to Ruin
- 1980 - End of the Century
- Redd Kross
- RedHook
- The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus
- Relient K
- Olivia Rodrigo (some of her work)
- Jeff Rosenstock
- Saves the Day
- Say Anything...
- Screeching Weasel
- Set It Off (combined with symphonic and orchestral rock, of all things)
- Shonen Knife
- Short Stack
- Simple Plan
- Sincere Engineer (a prime example of the "Pop-Punk Revival" in the Chicago scene)
- Smash Mouth
- Smoking Popes
- Soul Asylum (at least in their early days- think Hüsker Dü meets The Replacements)
- Spitalfield
- State Champs (a 2010s example and one that's gained a fair amount of popularity as of late)
- Story Untold
- Sum 41
- Superchic[k]
- Superchunk (they combine it with Indie Rock)
- Superdrag
- Skye Sweetnam
- Teenage Bottlerocket
- TrebleCharger
- The Undertones
- The Used
- The Vandals
- We Are The In Crowd
- Weezer
- 1994 - Weezer (The Blue Album)
- 1996 - Pinkerton
- 2001 - Weezer (The Green Album)
- 2002 - Maladroit
- 2005 - Make Believe
- 2008 - Weezer (The Red Album)
- 2009 - Raditude
- 2010 - Hurley
- 2019 - Weezer (The Teal Album)
- Waterparks
- Willow Smith (starting with lately I feel EVERYTHING)
- The Wonder Years
- Yellowcard
- YUNGBLUD
- Jonathan Young
- Zombina and the Skeletones