Why The 90s Pop Punk Revival Is The Best Thing To Happen In 2016

Source: Promo Image

As a lover of the 20^th century (and pretty much only the 2000’s in the 21^st century), the recent 90’s pop punk revival has had me stoked for what’s to come in 2016. Good Charlotte are back, Sum 41 are in full effect, Simple Plan have a new album, and after a confusing on-off hiatus, The Starting Line are back too. All good news for pop punk enthusiasts like me!

But even with all this pop punk goodness, a lot of people still think that these bands are just beating a dead horse…. a spiked-hair, Dickies-short-wearing dead horse. But they’re wrong, and pop punk is not dead. *Cue skateboarding party in an empty swimming pool*

Here are some of the reasons why I think 90s pop punk rules and why this revival is the greatest:

1. New music – The two most anxiety provoking words in the history of music. Will it be good? Will it suck? You really don’t know. You might get the next ‘In Too Deep’ or ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ or some weird, crappy, modern day dub-step-pop-punk infusion (that sounds beyond heinous).
2. Tour tour tour!! – New music means new albums, and new albums means touring, and touring means the opportunity to see your favourite 90’s bands play their old stuff live! There’s even a chance of some mega-90’s pop punk tours! Blink-Sum-NFG-GC-SP-TSL!
3. Everyone’s an angsty teenager when it comes to 90’s pop punk– It can make anyone feel young. Even if you’re married, have kids, a house and a mortgage, when you hear ‘Fat Lip’ by Sum 41 you immediately feel 16 again. 90’s pop punk makes everyone act immature.
4. The 90’s brought the hilarity and emo(tion) to music – 98% of 90’s pop punk is making fun of people, hating your girlfriend, being pissed off with your non-understanding parents, and just basically defining the word ‘angst’. This one is mostly for blink…. damn you blink…. yeah, I’m still not over the whole Tom/Matt thing.
5. You don’t have to say “you don’t know them, they’re a band from the 90’s” – With these classic bands coming back (and hopefully taking a page out of the Rolling Stones’ book. 53 years of music!) you won’t look like an embarrassing relic to the younger generation. Instead of annoyingly telling them about “your day”,  you can just be like, “you know those old, grey guys who are wearing the 3 quarter length chinos, talking about their hometown and their friends? Yeah, those are my dudes.”

6. 90’s forever – 90’s pop punk just reminds us of the simpler times. There are so many good pop punk bands nowadays, but they just don’t have that same spark of the 90’s. The vibe of that decade was pretty much summed up in American Pie – stupidity, fun, youth and more stupidity. The same concepts lie in modern pop punk music but because the genre really went mainstream in the 90s, those bands and those tracks were the originals and will be always be the face of pop punk.

Long live the 90’s!