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1A Record Club: Pop-punk's sophomore slump or the comeback of the year? (Rebroadcast)

20 years after her debut, hit album, "Let Go," the pop-punk star Avril Lavigne is back with a new record, "Love Sux."
20 years after her debut, hit album, "Let Go," the pop-punk star Avril Lavigne is back with a new record, "Love Sux."

Twenty years after Avril Lavigne released her first album, “Let Go,” the pop-punk star is back with a new record.

Her return coincides with a resurgence of the pop-punk genre. Olivia Rodrigo brought the early 2000s sound to the radio last year with her hit, “good 4 u” and Machine Gun Kelly’s 2020 album hit number one. Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker launched a new label, DTA Records, that fosters pop-punk artists like jxdn and Willow.

The 2022 music festival When We Were Young, which headlines pop-punk bands like Paramore and My Chemical Romance, sold out immediately after it was announced. The organizers added a second date, which also sold out, then a third. This comes only four years after Warped Tour, which featured many of the same artists, came to an end.

So what’s behind pop-punk’s comeback? Tim Marcin, writing in Mashable, has a theory:

There’s something to the fact that pop-punk’s resurgence followed the widespread adoption of snark-laden online doomerism, the idea that, well, everything sucks and the impending global emergencies — climate, pandemic, political, etc. — are nearly impossible to reverse. The world’s burning, so we might as well laugh.

Today’s pop-punk sound is similar to twenty years ago, though it’s more likely to blend with other genres like electronic music and hip hop. Its creators, though, are more diverse than back then.

Put on your band tee and eyeliner, because the 1A Record Club is breaking down the resurgence of pop-punk.

Copyright 2022 WAMU 88.5

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Avery Kleinman