It's been a bizarre week involving a surprise trip to Florida and free meals from work, but I've been reneging on my promise to start posting more. Without further ado I present...

Pop-Punk

Time of Popularity: 2002-2003
Ripped off the musical stylings of: Real punk
Trademark sound: Take something by the Ramones, overproduce the hell out of it, and change all the lyrics to be about how the girl at school just doesn't understand you or how you'll just never fit in because you have bleach-tipped hair and an upside-down visor.
Most Successful Artists: Good Charlotte, Blink 182, New Found Glory
Band with the most staying power: Blink 182, although they've "matured" beyond their childish days...theoretically.
Clothing: The aforementioned bleach-tipped hair and upside-down visors. Those shell necklaces.
Long-term contribution to society: Didn't have a chance to really make any contributions since Good Charlotte singlehandedly beat this genre to death by appearing on MTV eighty times a day, posturing for awhile about how totally punk they were with their tattoos and black nail polish, then singing songs about how we should rob rich people's houses. The rise of pop-punk did coincide with DVD technology, so every half-assed band with a hit single could come out with either a) a live DVD showing them playing the same 8 songs from their album, only to the tune of 3,000 screaming children or b) a retrospective DVD showing us all sorts of "funny stuff" from the studio, like the bassist eating fast food or the band sitting around strumming on acoustic guitars with beer bottles strewn everywhere.
The Last Word: It's hard to be really sarcastic about a genre that I actually liked. But then again, it's not so hard when all the bands shamelessly pandered to high schoolers, as this was about the time when marketers (and record company bigwigs) realized that teenagers (especially spoiled ones) have tons and tons of disposable income to spend on DVDs. And why was every successful pop-punk band from either southern Califronia or Florida? They must put something in the water there that lets you quickly learn how to repeat simple power chord progressions over and over again.

Next time: Emo, for real this time.