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How TikTok saved pop-punk
"It was never a phase, it’s a lifestyle"
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Music
July 9th, 2021
July 9th, 2021
If you actively lived the early 2000s you must have experienced first-hand invasion of pop-punk in the charts around the world. In the age of boy bands and pop at all costs, MTV also had to bow to the invasion of 4/4 guitars and drums that from the garages and rehearsal rooms of half of America climbed the charts all over the world. Despite an apparently unstoppable success, even pop-punk ended up surrendering to the inexorable passage of time: Blink-182 separated, giving life to +44 and Angels & Airwaves, while Fall Out Boy tried to save themselves by clinging to the lifebuoy of the more commercial pop. Despite years of silence, that phenomenon has never completely died but was only waiting for a new generation able to bring it back to life with an updated and correct version of a movement forced to deal with accusations of sexual abuse, lack of diversity and sexism.
The Starting Line
Paramore
Fall Out Boy
All Time Low
Machine Gun Kelly, Travis Barker, YUNGBLUD
Never as in this case has Gen Z been an essential part of this rebirth, finding an unexpected ally in the world of American hip-hop, which from Lil Uzi Vert, passing through the late Juice WRLD and Lil Peep, has never hidden his passion for that world made of names and memories that seem to belong to a past geological era, when the names of Fueled by Ramen (historic label of bands such as Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco) and of the Warped Tour were of the supporting columns. The final shock was obviously TikTok, capable of reviving one of the anthems of pop-punk, Dear Maria, Count Me In by All Time Low, transforming it into a real trend to the cry of "it was never a phase, it's a lifestyle” shouted by hordes of kids who in 2007, the year the piece was published, were probably still in their infants. Always TikTok has seen the rebirth, albeit only aesthetic, of the Emo, which has always been a second cousin of pop-punk and perhaps the first responsible for its return to the scene.
It is the charm of the icons, those who in the world of pop-punk saw in Travis Barker the immortal name able to survive the years and changes in the world of music, finding himself years later with the burden and the honour of giving life to a whole movement. To do this, of course, he could count on a Gen Z in love with an era he never lived, but with names like KennyHoopla, JXDN (former tiktoker Jaden Hossler), Willow (yes, Will Smith's daughter) and Machine Gun Kelly has managed to reconstruct a movement that has crumbled over the years with a renewed aesthetic in fit and content. If original pop-punk stood out for its clumsy and spontaneous outfits, in which the drummer and bassist were always dressed like two people who passed there by chance, in the new wave streetwear aesthetics are merged with styles and fits that look to Hedi Slimane, Celine and Saint Laurent adapting to the tastes and needs of its new audience. The merit, as mentioned, is also of TikTok, capable of becoming the catalyst of a new aesthetic as MySpace did more than twenty years ago, bringing hordes of teenagers on their side ready to be influenced by the rebellious charm of an immortal movement, but above all capable of drowning everyone, from Olivia Rodrigo to Tyler Posey, in his whirlwind of distorted guitar riffs and very straight drums as only Travis Barker could do.
