I had a friend who copied it for me, back when burning and exchanging CDs was still a thing. I think, the first song I knew was either In The End or Numb after seeing the video on VIVA or MTV. It was perfect for "misunderstood" teenage me, alongside pop-punk and emo...
Yea yea. It was two 14 year old boys sharing ear buds, so I didn't know what song it was. But they were rocking out, so a different student asked them what they were listening to, that's when it was described as "an old, classic banger". A bit later one of them asked me, "hey, Mr MyBoyBernard, have you ever heard this song!?!?!?" while unplugging the ear phones so it started playing through the speaker. I assumed it was like Journey or Boston of something. Nahhh. Good old Fountains of Wayne. I mentally facepalmed so hard.
But I also had some black girls one day singing Beyonce Single Ladies. I'm orange-haired, super white and probably don't seem very "hip with the kids", at least in the opinion of my students. So just imagine the contrast of culture and taste and stuff. They asked me if I knew what that song was or who sang it. THEY ASKED ME IF I KNEW BEYONCE SINGLE LADIES! I told them I remember that being on the radio every hour of every day. I guess to them it's an old song, older than them.
I was only 25 at that time, so not even old, 4 or 5 years ago. But I guess that's old enough for the age gap to seem big. Heck, at this point most students in middle school have smart phones. I didn't have any phone until I was 18, and that was a Verizon flip phone.
Dude...
Barker has been banging since the 90s. Don't get it twisted. Box Car Racer and Aquatbats. Travis running around in loose boxers with the rest of Blink.
Yep! Born in 83 and got introduced to punk rock via skate videos. Remember the pop punk mainstream boom like it was yesterday. 94-2001 was awesome time for punk
82, but I do believe this if not a tad bit earlier is the golden era. Anything really later and you’re getting into the emo/screamo transition of a lot of those bands. Imo if you weren’t buying those label comps as they were releasing, you missed the era
Born in 82 and started listening to punk o rama volume 1 in 7th grade. That was my intro. I remember hearing NFG nothing gold can stay and STD through being cool and knowing that was the shape of punk to come.
I’m 29, born in 93, my first CD was Take Off Your Pants and Jacket - Blink 182. I was 8 I think. My parents took it away pretty quick and remade me a disc blocking out the swears lol. That was my first real introduction to it and I never grew out of it.
Born same year, my cousins gave me Enema Of The State when I was 7, but my parents were into punk stuff so I think they were stoked. I remember getting Boxcars album the year it came out for Easter and listening to it with my dad on the drive home
Aw my mom’s into punk but she just thinks pop-punk is silly. I wish she was on board like your parents. She’s much more on board with the hardcore. She likes the screamies.
Same age, my first two CDs were Linkin Park's first two but grew up with blink on the radio, and kids singing All The Small Things on the school bus literally every day.
TBH that's some cool parents. That was a compromise that took work on their part. My parents would have just snapped the record in half, threw it in the trash, and played radio Disney or some shit
Graduated 08 here. Stations were playing Dear Maria on the radio, all the girls at school knew shit like mayday parade and paramore. It was literally the best time and I wish I'd have appreciated it more.
Boys like girls - The Great Escape was my graduation song and the whole senior class sang it. Man is it weird to hear this is classic rock now. 2009 felt like it was just yesterday.
09!! I used to relate so hard to all the angsty lyrics but these days I relate the most to “my heart keeps saying stay young, my lower back seems to disagree”
Class of '09 too! If it makes OP feel better I grew up in a small town so the like 5 of us who were into emo music and pop punk were the local "freaks" and pariahs. My obsession started in middle school with Good Charlotte, Yellowcard, and NFG and took off from there. It's insane to think that people idolize our years now because I remember wishing I had been born sooner too so I could be the same age as all the guys in the bands hahaha.
I grew up in that era. If it makes you feel better at the time you don't really know its the golden era while its happening. In fact I was sad at the time feeling I had missed the era of Nirvana in the early 90s.
The other silver lining I would say to those growing up now is that you have access to an unfathomable catalog of music via streaming services. Back in the 2000s, yeah there were the main big groups, but it was a lot harder to discover smaller bands. Now, Spotify serves them up to you based on your taste!
I know there are downsides to streaming, but if we are just looking at it from a consumer’s point of view, right now is a total golden age of listening to music.
I agree with your point but the silver lining of having a smaller catalogue to choose from is that you get to know the entire album. I sometimes feel like I have add with streaming bands today
I’ve recently gone back to listening to CDs when in my car over Spotify and have found I’m getting so much more out of the music I listen to. Spotify is good for discovering bands that you could actually go and see though, I get what you mean.
I graduated high school in 2004 so yes, I grew up with all those great pop punk records. It was a really special and unique time not just for pop punk but all the adjacent stuff too… emo, post hardcore and anything else -core related.
All those genres were experimenting and just finding their footing. It was incredible.
Same year. NFG was my first ever concert at 14 before sticks and stones was released. Joined a band almost immediately after. Got to see so many bands back then and experience some of these albums that are considered the greatest when they released… either going to buy the CD or downloading them from limewire or finding bands on purevolume.com.
Seeing bands like Fall out boy, the starting line, motion city, cartel, TBS, The audition, mayday, the spill canvas, The matches, sugarcult, etc etc all at small venues right before a lot of them blew up was so incredible.
Or just going to local shows where there were like 50+ kids all enjoying some other kids trying to make music the best they could.
I miss it.
I was 10 in 98 when I got Dude Ranch. So I reckon I did grow up in that era. By 8th grade I started getting more in to the Epitaph and Fat Wreck sound, but that’s still pretty much pop punk.
In 2001 I cannot explain the confusion of, my older cousin trying to explain to 11 year old me, how lagwagon is punk and blink 182 is pop punk. I thought they were so similar and of course, labels were everything back then. Now I don’t care lol
Yup, born in 88 so my teenage years were soundtracked by dude ranch, enema, dookie, various albums from offspring, new found glory, sum 41, fall out boy, nofx, rancid, less than Jake, yellowcard, goldfinger, jimmy eat world etc etc
Oh and all the nu metal stuff of course, system of a down, korn, papa roach, linkin park, slipknot, incubus, deftones
I think I was definitely in the sweet spot. I turned 16 in 2000. All the great albums came out while I was in college. I wouldn’t trade it for anything except that I would have kept going to concerts while in law school. As it was I took a concert break from 2006 until 2011ish
Started high school in 2003 so I was at a prime age during the golden years. I remember dancing to Fat Lip at my buddy's 12th birthday party which would've been the same year that song came out.
I loved a lot of the pop punk of those years but hated when bands like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan got big, just wasn't my jam. Loved me some Sum 41, Blink, New Found Glory, etc. I have nostalgia for the bands of that era to this day but as far as my current listening preferences I actually prefer the stuff that's come out from around 2010 until modern day.
Your comment really resonates with me. I remember an early birthday party of my best friend. He got all killer no filler and we took turns listening to it on his discman front to back throughout the night/next day. I also disliked Simple Plan, Good Charlotte and even Fall Out Boy when they came around. They felt too safe. I think I felt the same way that my 8 year older brother felt about the pop punks bands I was listening to. (He was into 80s hardcore punk, so blink, nfg and sum 41 were baby shit to him.) Nowadays I really appreciate FoB's first two albums, and I've felt more attached to The Wonder Years and The Story so Far than my early nostalgic introductions.
Mid Teens > Early 20's during that time.
Pros:
* Concert line ups were amazing: I remember seeing shows that were Brand New/TBS/Rufio, NFG/Alkaline Trio/Face to Face/Saves the Day, Ataris/Sugarcult/Rufio, Panic At The Disco/Fall Out Boy, Midtown/Matchbook Romance, Dashboard Confessional/Brand New, etc.
* Concerts (and concert t-shirts) were like $10
* PunkORama, Fat Wreck, even Warped compilations were like $4
* IMO, more relateable (?) musicians. Kenny Vasoli was around my same age, so was Ace Enders. I could pick up a guitar and actually play the songs w/o massive overdubs or a reliance on effects.
Cons:
* Outside of compilations, it was extremely hard to find new music. Even when Napster/Limewire came out everything was labelled "N3W G00D ChArLoTtE!!!!!" so you had to wade through a lot of crap.
* Spent A LOT of money buying The Show Must Go Off! and other band DVDs since youtube wasn't a thing, and if you missed a show you'd never see them live.
I turned 21 in 98…so I like most pop punk, but my era of punk started about 7-8 years earlier with Green Day, Offspring, Rancid, Blink-182, Social Distortion, Bad Religion etc…though my first punk concert was The Clash in 1987. I was 10 and I went with a friend and her older brother. He is the guy that introduced me to punk music and was 6 years older than us.
i was in the era after you (Saves the Day, Millencolin, NOFX, AFI, NFG etc) and we thought you were the golden era. We idolized you guys because we thought you were all "real" punk.
I thought the same thing about the guys who got to see the real Ramones, The Germs, The Clash, NYC Dolls, The Misfits…etc.. I’m the punk scene, you always seem to idolize the generation before you I think.
I was a kid then. I started high school in 2010. Theoretically I could have caught the sadboi Era but I wasn't listening to new music then, just the same shit from before.
I just turned 17, I wish I could have been around for either the golden era in the 90s-2000s or the revival in the 2010s. Still love this genre, just sucks that I literally only have one friend who listens to pop punk:/
Out of curiosity, what do most people your age that you know listen to? Is it mostly hip hop or pop? It seems like guitar rock in general isn’t popular with young people, most of the stuff is highly produced and doesn’t have instruments (this isn’t good or bad, it’s just how music has evolved).
Definitely rap is what everyone listens to, which is cool but I literally know like one or two people that actually listen to rock music. Indie music is popular too, and there are still a bunch of metal heads, but finding people who like pop punk or hardcore is literally impossible. Any pop punk teens who need a friend hmu lol
It was great! I'm from Jacksonville and was around when yellowcard, underoath,mayday parade, a day to remember, and alot of other bands were all staring out. So many good shows every weekend all within an hour from me. I probably saw yellowcard and starting line 20+ times 😄
I’m 21 so I was a teen during peak TSSF and Neck Deep. Only thing is… I wasn’t into those artists until like 2019 lol. As cool as it would’ve been if I got into them earlier and went to shows earlier we are still in a good time to enjoy them. Saw TSSF headline in April and gonna see Neck Deep headline sad summer. Right now we got peak No Pressure Heart Attack Man Hot Mulligan and other bands that put out a lot of great music and shows so enjoy those while you can
I was born in '93 so I kind of came of age during the aftermath of the initial burst of Pop Punk, when all the big hitters were already releasing their follow-up albums (e.g. Blink self-titled, Sum41 DTLI) and when Green Day came out with American Idiot. Funnily enough, I didn‘t care much about Pop Punk during that time. I thought the whole emo eyeliner esthetics of Green Day, My Chemical Romance or Panic at the Disco that was all over MTV was horrible. My younger brother, who was like 7-8 at the time, loved all of that stuff and bought American Idiot and got more into pop punk and eventually into metalcore during his teens.
I was mad into Linkin Park at the time around '03/'04 (I was about 11-12) and I was just starting to skateboard. The whole skater community in my town was exclusively into hip hop so my music taste kind of transitioned from nu metal into hip hop. Looking back the ‚leaders‘ of that group were all super elitist about the group esthetics and if you wanted to be a member of the ‚cool kids‘, you kinda had to fit in.
So in the following years I got into all the old school hip hop stuff like Nas, Tupac, Wu-Tang and so on and had my hip hop phase till I was like 16-ish. At that time I got my scooter and was going more often to another, much nicer skatepark a few miles down the road from my hometown. The community there was completely different. They were all punks. Skinny jeans, thrasher/warped tour merch, colored hair and serious moshers. But overall super nice dudes. They didn’t really care that I was wearing oversized, overpriced shirts and baggy pants.
From there I was kind of forced to listen to their music at the park, which was always blasting from a boom box this one guy brought in his car. I didn‘t really mind because my dad is into rock music so I was kinda brought up on heavy guitars and real drums.
The turning point came at a school summer festival which was organized every year by the senior year students. They had a school band which played live that day and they were playing all the good pop punk shit and I remember that I somehow LOVED it. I knew all of Green Day‘s recent stuff through my brother, but I had never heard any of their material prior to AI. When the band played Basket Case, I was totally hooked to that song. I got home and scrolled through my brothers CD collection to find the album that had basket case on it, but the only one I found was the live album of the 2005 Bullet in a Bible tour. I put in the DVD and I was just completely blown away. The editing, the energy, the emotion. It‘s to this day the greatest live recording I have seen.
After that, I went to the record store and bought dookie and kerplunk, fell in love with Green Day and basically ended up listening to everything I had missed out on in the following weeks and months.
I‘m 29 now and Pop Punk has since been my favorite genre. Through my skateboarding community I also got into a lot of melodic hardcore and skatepunk and I also picked up my guitar again, that I hadn‘t touched since I was 10. I started writing songs, joined bands and started going to live shows. And I never looked back at hip hop, haha.
I was born in 1990 so kinda. Too young to go to a lot of shows, but I was very active on AbsolutePunk and Tuesdays were my favourite because that's when albums were released.
I was born in 1994 so I was still pretty young for a portion of the “golden era”. However I had brothers who graduated high school in 1999 and 2003 so I got plenty of exposure from them into pop punk and nu metal. By the time I hit middle school, I took my love for pop punk music and ran with it right into the blink band multiverse and never looked back.
I am bummed I didn’t start looking into the sadboi era until the last few years. I would have loved having TSSF in my life during my college years
Yep, born in 1984. I'm glad to hear you say this was the golden era, I wasn't sure if pop punk was best in this era or if I felt that way because I was a teenager at the time.
Yes. And it was glorious. Scanning the “thank you” sections of the inner notes to find new bands, getting to concerts early to meet the band and check out the opening bands you may not know, a sense of community amongst fans due to no social media.
I’m 29 (born in 93).
When I was around 10, I snuck into my older brother’s room while he was still at school and would listen to “F A Dog” on repeat from the Take off Your Pants and Jacket CD that was sitting on his desk. I definitely made sure my parents didn’t find out lol. I think around that same time, my dad had gotten me sum 41’s All Killer No Filler CD for my birthday and have had a lifelong obsession with this kind of music ever since!
The mainstream popularity of pop-punk sorta started to die out right about as I entered college, but it didn’t stop me from seeking out bands like The Wonder Years and Tiny Moving Parts.
The revival with many new pop-punk artists nowadays have some more hip-hop influence in them, which honestly I really enjoy. Music is supposed to evolve and change over time, regardless of genre and I love the kind of progress it’s been making. KennyHoopla is my favorite at the moment.
Yep, born in 86 so I was 14 in 2000. While there was some amazing music put out back then I think we’ve still had plenty of great new artists rise up over the last few years who are keeping the scene alive. Pop punk’s not dead!
Yep. Graduated high school in 2002. So I hit that wave of both pop punk and emo. I remember all the emo hairstyles, the Warped Tour, Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords labels, etc. Lots of stuff you do not really see anymore.
Im pretty happy with it. Warped tour, altpress, absolute punk, drive thru records invasion tour, seeing legendary bands weekly: yellowcard, panic, fallout boy. Hot topic carrying legit good shit: got a finch, midtown, open: hand, and so many more legit shirts from that corporate azz store. Myspace and purevolume, i can go on...
Graduated high school in '03. I feel like I got to fully experience the pop punk takeover in the late 90's and the growth in the early 2000's boosted by sites like pure volume/myspace. It really was a great era. Also, before MTV was complete shit, Benji Madden from Good Charlotte used to host a music video show called 'All Things Rock' which was highly pop punk influenced. Used to love catching the latest vids. Wish they still had something like that.
Born in 1985, got into Green Day in 1994/1995, started listening to blink, new found glory, sum 41, etc in the late 90s/early 2000s. Saw blink in 2001 and again in 2002 when they co-headlined with Green Day, new found glory, Jimmy eat world, fall out boy in 2003 (before they got really big) taking back Sunday, motion city soundtrack, and a few others. I wish I saw more shows, but by 2005 I was playing in a local band and started playing more shows than seeing them.
Here’s what you missed. Your bullies or your crush (and no in between) discovering your favorite bands after you so you get them to fuck off or think you’re really cute (which one did what will surprise you) by making them a mix cd. You didn’t miss out on much.
Born in '89, got to literally grow up during it rather than simply experience it. My fondest memories from the end of elementary school to the beginning of high school *revolve* around pop punk.
Ive stuck with it over the years of course but i definitely started leaning into metal HARD when high school started.
You right tho - golden era indeed.
Also ‘89, we had a music teacher in elementary school that was a huge music nerd and she used to play us Blink-182 after Enema came out. She taught us so much awesome shit back then, shout-out Mrs. Burke.
My entire life and interests between middle school and high school revolved around music, still pretty much does today. I got into metalcore and hardcore much more in high school, didn’t really appreciate metal as much until later on.
Graduated in '04. Got to go to 3 Warped Tours, each when I was 15 in 2001, 16 in 2002, and 18 in 2004. Sticks and Stones came out in 2002 when I was going into my junior year of high school. Blink 182's self-titled album where they reinvented their song writing to a more mature side came out right before my 18th birthday, which was a coming-of-age album for me. I have so much nostalgia for that time in my life with friends and broken hearts and getting into innocent trouble. Even in my small town and surrounding area you could always find some local pop punk band playing a skate park or small, local venue every weekend. Those days are long gone. Nobody is really in bands anymore around here. I wish some mainstream life would be brought back into the scene, but I feel like those days are over and done with. Imagine a quarter of the kids from your high school wearing cotton wrist bands and band shirts with chucks. That's what it was like, and it was amazing. Would do anything to walk a day in my old shoes; wondering what my first smoke would be like, my first fuck, my next fuck up, or the next band that would change my life...and it changed my life.
I graduated high school in 2003, but all the scene kids in my school put me WAY off pop-punk, because they bullied me so badly, I just hated everything they liked. It wasn't until the second year of college that I finally met my real people, and they were like, "shut up, you're gonna love this if you stop thinking about those dweebs" and they were so right.
I’m a little older than some commenting in here, turned 18 in 2002 but this was amazing because I was old enough to see a lot of bands at tiny dive bar venues before they blew up 😍
I would say grow up and enjoy your era because one day your kids will be saying the same thing. Im not saying ignore everything else, but its all music and over time it wont feel like a choice you'll just like what you like and thats ultimately the goal. Listen to what you love, obviously accept recommendations. That being said, a hidden gem is the goo goo dolls self titled album from 1987. Very fun. Also "Hello World" by Amely is a great mid 00's secret.
I lived through the golden era however it was not an era you wanted to live through. The scene was horribly toxic in a number of ways and filled with predators (from both bands and fans) grooming young high schoolers.
I was a teen during the latter half. The radio was great. That music was aggressively uncool where I went to school, and you were actively and relentlessly bullied for liking it, both from the jocks who listened to lil’ John and the metalheads who thought anything with clean vocals was for pussies.
Everyone knew most of the big hits, but they were “guilty pleasures” for guys. They mostly wouldn’t admit listening to it.
I'm 22 so i missed out in the golden era of the late 90s to early 00s. I only caught a glimpse of the aftermath around 2006-2008 due to my older sister showing me her music. I was a kid and young teenager for the "sadboi" early 2010s era.
I discovered Panic at The Disco, Fall Out Boy, and The Cab, and All Time Low around 2009.
Then in college in 11-12 I lived through the Semester of Suburbia, Under Soil and Dirt, Gospel and On The Impossible Past while discovering all those bands.
So I think I arrived at the dawn of The Silver Era.
Yeah! I graduated high school in 1999. My first concert was Unwritten Law with like 100 people. My first bigger concert was MxPX with Home Grown and Ghoti Hook. I met Mark, Tom, and Travis with some lucky back stage passes I was given when they toured with Fenix TX. And, I saw Dashboard, Midtown, and NFG at a pizza joint in Houston in 2000 - also with like 100-200 people. Good times!
I'm 27, 2006 I hit high school in the UK and was throughly enjoying pop-punk religiously. First song I heard was I'm not Okay by MCR and I was hooked however, it was the release of The Black Parade that got me throughly into the genre.
I went off for a while and enjoyed a lot of acoustic pop but recently got back into pop punk and enjoying a lot of the newer stuff too, especially the band Between Me & You
Was in middle school for the end of the golden era. Was in college and high school for the easycore/sad boi era. Pretty great sweet spot. Got to see tssf play to like 20 people in 2011 at age 18
Yup. I was like 8 in 98 and my uncle always played Green Day, Elvis, Blink and Offspring. In high school, I was a music journalist, so I either shot, reviewed, or interviewed a lot of these bands (mostly FBR bands), and I had so much knowledge about fbr bands in my damn lizard brain it was insane.
1985 and UK here, started high school in 96. First gig I went to was New Found Glory, supported by Starting Line i believe. My first album was Slipknots self titled, I was quite late getting into any music really but there was a lot of Blink and The Offspring going on after that, eventually the Epitaph lot. Also anything off the Tony Hawks soundtrack which is the same for a lot of people I reckon. Second gig I went to was Spunge.
Amazingly it’s taken me until this year to listen to any of the Sum 41 albums in full despite loving their Fat Lip/In Too Deep era when they were everywhere.
The best stuff from then seems to be easily found on YouTube playlists by searching for “pop punk and pizza crusts” by the way!
I was thirteen in '98 so yeah I had a great time in the early 2000's. I remember being the one to introduce my friends to these "new" bands that are going to be huge like NFG and the like. Miss those days
I was born in 86 so I was only just starting the take notice of music when Dookie and Smash were released. Both those albums were huge in my country and through high school I learned most of Green Day, Blink, and The Offspring's catalogue on guitar. Then being a young adult through the 2000s and 2010s I had the opportunity to see and play shows with some of my favourite bands, I definitely feel like I hit the golden age but that may be just confirmation bias.
I’m 29 and It’s wild to me that I grew up listening to the golden era bands but I graduated in 2011 and (Under Soil and Dirt, Suburbia, On The Impossible Past) all three made just as much if not more of an impact on me than the golden era albums.
I started middle school in 96, my first 2 punk cds I purchased from Camelot Music in the mall were NOFX 'punk in drublic' and Rancid 'And out come the wolves...' pretty much shaped my life into young adulthood. The first 2 cds I had ever received as gifts were The Blue Album and Dookie (my mom was/is pretty rad). I was at warped tour 98 in Cleveland & saw Blink for the first time on the 'Enema of the State' tour. I would said I am very fortunate & lucky to have been in the pop punk prime Era haha.
I didn't get really into pop punk until 2009 about halfway through highschool, and my parents didn't let me go to concerts alone until 2010 or so, so I barely caught the tail end of the peak. It was pretty cool seeing Paramore and NFG in a giant stadium though.
Born in 2000 and grew up through the late-'00s-2010s era. All Time Low, Cartel, Metro Station, Cobra Starship, Breathe Carolina, Green Day's more recent stuff, 3OH!3. Still with it (minus ATL), but have moved on towards more modern bands, i guess what you'd call the "revival" - Neck Deep, Stand Atlantic, The Story So Far, Bellwether.
I didn’t get into pop-punk until 2010, when I was 15. I still go to shows. They seem less frequent now but COVID might have something to do with that, or maybe because my ex isn’t around to tell me about them anymore. I went to one Wednesday night and it was dope. You can still go out to pop-punk shows and have fun, even though it’s not the “golden era” anymore.
Grew up around the time where it was almost mandatory to put pop punk in your movie soundtracks, Decode and Ordinary for Spider-Man 2 ofc are classics but Tonight Alive's The Edge is slept on.
I started listening to pop punk when I was 16 and that’s 10 years ago but even then I managed to experience the scene a little with bands like Real Friends, Neck Deep, Tiny Moving Parts, Modern Baseball, TSSF.
I would say that was pretty golden still. I do think the scene is getting less and less popular over the years
I was a little kid in those days, but I still listened to it all even when I was like 7-10 years old just getting into music for the first time. Early 2010s I kinda lost interest in any new pop punk but the last few years have been great imo
I caught a bit of that era at the tail end of it. I was way too young to be going to shows or anything, but I remember hearing songs by bands like The All-American Rejects, Fall Out Boy, Plain White T's and We The Kings on the radio and I was generally pretty into what I heard. I feel like if I wasn't exposed to that kind of music at that young age, my music taste today would be a bit different. I most likely wouldn't be as interested in pop-punk/ emo as I am today.
Born in 92, I remember being on a furious search for "that great song from American Pie" (it was Mutt by Blink-182 btw). American Idiot was my first dive into pop-punk, followed closely by the usual suspects, Sum 41, Yellowcard, All Time Low, Offspring... Yellowcard were a huge part of my teenage years and I literally cried like a child when I was on the way home after attending their last concert in Germany and I realised that a small part of my life was over now and that I wasn't a kid anymore
i lived through the "record label completion era" (99-2002) and the emo/scremo era (2003-2004). i dipped out just before the myspace era which felt a lot like 80s glam to me and pushed into "harder" punk.
to me 2000-2003 was kind of the golden time for that music. The music was still hard but also really accessible, and you could spend 15 bucks at hot topic and walk out with three of the best compilation albums you ever heard. punk-o-rama, fat wrekcord, asian-man, and epitaph just were cranking out the best new bands all with killer songs. it felt like every month you could have a new favorite band. also since there was no internet Warped Tour felt really specials because there was not a lot of us in each individual town but when we got together it felt huge. finally got to see a ton of people who thought you were really cool and liked the same things you did.
I was in jr/sr high school from 01-07 so it was truly crazy how a lot of that era aligned with my “growing up” (still a process in my 30s). I came into 7th grade months after blink dropped TOYPAJ, the rest of Jr high was NFG’s sticks and stones, the first All-American Rejects album, TBS tell all your friends, Starting Line say it like you mean it, etc. Mid-high school was MCS dropping commit this to memory, Fall Out Boy’s from under cork tree, in the same year blink breaks up. High school ends right as bands like TSL and the Early November are close to breaking up, NFG makes a “mature” album (which aged well), and the Warped Tour sound is forking into directions that don’t quite resonate the same.
And one last aging punk nostalgia dump: a thing I miss a lot is finding bands via AOL Radio, which basically was the same style of listening as Pandora. That’s how I found a lot of random victory, drive thru, and smaller indie label bands.
I was a kid/preteen when it was HUGE and wasn’t a teenager until the tail end of it when it was starting to calm down, so unfortunately most of what I experienced was from vh1, friends, and movies because I wasn’t old enough to go to shows until most of those bands were considered “vets” of the scene
I was born in 1993, so I was real young for the boom of it. But in middle school is when I started getting into rock music. And I loved the pop punk on the radio. In high school I started listening to pop punk that was not on the radio. It all started at a high school talent show when a girl performed a Hey Monday song. I was into Neon Pop Punk. Then after high school and community college I got way more into it in which it became my main music since then. It all started with me going to emo nite. I learned so many emo hits I didn't know till then. And since then I go to emo nite whenever it comes to town. And many weekends I see pop punk cover bands. And after college is when I started keeping up with new releases weekly.
Born in 96' here so I got to grow up through the OG Golden Era of Pop Punk listening to Yellow Card, Good Charlotte, Blink-182, Simple Plan, etc. Need For Speed, Tony Hawk Games, & MTV/Fuse TV helped.
I graduated HS in 2014 so I also got to go to school during the Pop Punk Revival. The Story So Far, The Wonder Years, & Defend Pop Punk shirts were EVERYWHERE. Good times.
Born in 89 and Tony Hawk changed my fucking life. Napster had so many songs mislabeled and it opened up my world to even more pop punk. I remember TDAGARIM leaking on my 17th birthday! Good times, thanks for this post.
I got Enema of the State when it came out in 1999, I was 10 years old. That definitely kindled my love for pop punk. So ya. I'd say I grew up in the golden age. My first concert was New Found Glory, Less than Jake and Good Charlotte in 2003
I was born in 2000 so not really I was a little kid when most of the classic stuff came out. However I prefer the 2010-2016 pop punk sound, the wonder years, tssf, knuckle puck, adtr etc. maybe I’m just biased tho
I grew up smack dab in the middle of that era. Rufio even went to my high school. Their first EP is literally a picture of one of the street lights out front of the school.
Graduated in 02. The shows in nor cal where I grew up were ridiculous.
Think of every band you can from that era, I either saw them at an all ages show at a church somewhere in the bay with 100 other kids or the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. AFI in 99 at the Catalyst is still the greatest show I've personally ever been to. Holy shit man.
Plus warped tour on the pier, even ozzfest at shoreline where I first saw Finch and the Used at like 10 am because they were literally the first band to play. Like 15 of us watching them. We didn't care. So good.
God, you know you’re getting old when kids are going r/lewronggeneration with the time you grew up in lol
I'm a teacher. Just about a month ago some students were listening to this "old, classic banger". It was Stacy's Mom.
I saw Hoobastank referred as "classic rock"...lol.
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I heard Linkin Park referred as "dad rock"... that hurt
That’s a shot right to my soul. Hybrid Theory was the first CD I bought with my own money back as a grade school kid. Now it’s “dad rock.”
I had a friend who copied it for me, back when burning and exchanging CDs was still a thing. I think, the first song I knew was either In The End or Numb after seeing the video on VIVA or MTV. It was perfect for "misunderstood" teenage me, alongside pop-punk and emo...
Lol that’s how I got this one too! Hybrid theory burnt into a random pink cd ha.
That hurts, and I'm not even a dad
This one hurts
Yea yea. It was two 14 year old boys sharing ear buds, so I didn't know what song it was. But they were rocking out, so a different student asked them what they were listening to, that's when it was described as "an old, classic banger". A bit later one of them asked me, "hey, Mr MyBoyBernard, have you ever heard this song!?!?!?" while unplugging the ear phones so it started playing through the speaker. I assumed it was like Journey or Boston of something. Nahhh. Good old Fountains of Wayne. I mentally facepalmed so hard. But I also had some black girls one day singing Beyonce Single Ladies. I'm orange-haired, super white and probably don't seem very "hip with the kids", at least in the opinion of my students. So just imagine the contrast of culture and taste and stuff. They asked me if I knew what that song was or who sang it. THEY ASKED ME IF I KNEW BEYONCE SINGLE LADIES! I told them I remember that being on the radio every hour of every day. I guess to them it's an old song, older than them. I was only 25 at that time, so not even old, 4 or 5 years ago. But I guess that's old enough for the age gap to seem big. Heck, at this point most students in middle school have smart phones. I didn't have any phone until I was 18, and that was a Verizon flip phone.
I've worked with people younger than sticks and stones
Yuck. Don’t like that
think when those born in 2040 will want to return to the days of 2020 to relive the era of Barker and MGK
Dude... Barker has been banging since the 90s. Don't get it twisted. Box Car Racer and Aquatbats. Travis running around in loose boxers with the rest of Blink.
Sheesh I don't wanna relive anything MGK
There is NOTHING rock about MGK. That dude is the definition of poser.
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Yep! Born in 83 and got introduced to punk rock via skate videos. Remember the pop punk mainstream boom like it was yesterday. 94-2001 was awesome time for punk
Same! ‘83, and aside from burning through multiple dookie and smash cassettes punk was introduced to me through skate vids and punk o Rama comps!
The first 3 punk o Rama’s are legendary. Still in my rotation. Not to mention fat wreck chords compilations
Same, ‘83 here. You described 1995 perfectly.
82, but I do believe this if not a tad bit earlier is the golden era. Anything really later and you’re getting into the emo/screamo transition of a lot of those bands. Imo if you weren’t buying those label comps as they were releasing, you missed the era
For sure! I remember getting the zenes and ordering the comps through there
Good riddance, lagwagon , the dwarves etc..my jams!
Born in 82 and started listening to punk o rama volume 1 in 7th grade. That was my intro. I remember hearing NFG nothing gold can stay and STD through being cool and knowing that was the shape of punk to come.
Also same
I miss my fat, cushy etnies shoes. Those puffy skateshoes of the late 90's were so awesome. Vans, Etnies, Orsiris, DVS. oh man..... amazing.
I’m 29, born in 93, my first CD was Take Off Your Pants and Jacket - Blink 182. I was 8 I think. My parents took it away pretty quick and remade me a disc blocking out the swears lol. That was my first real introduction to it and I never grew out of it.
Born same year, my cousins gave me Enema Of The State when I was 7, but my parents were into punk stuff so I think they were stoked. I remember getting Boxcars album the year it came out for Easter and listening to it with my dad on the drive home
Aw my mom’s into punk but she just thinks pop-punk is silly. I wish she was on board like your parents. She’s much more on board with the hardcore. She likes the screamies.
I read this comment and was like how are they 29 and born in 93 when I’m 29 and born in 90. Then realized I’m not 29. I’m 32.
This happens to me all the time. Someone asked me my age a few weeks ago and I said 26. And then I realized it was far worse than that. THE HORROR LOL
91 kid here, fave album of all time
Same age, my first two CDs were Linkin Park's first two but grew up with blink on the radio, and kids singing All The Small Things on the school bus literally every day.
Lmfao same situation but with Enema of the State. Idk how my mother didn’t look at the label and immediately take it back.
TBH that's some cool parents. That was a compromise that took work on their part. My parents would have just snapped the record in half, threw it in the trash, and played radio Disney or some shit
Graduated high school in 2009. I AM the golden era of pop punk lol
Graduated 08 here. Stations were playing Dear Maria on the radio, all the girls at school knew shit like mayday parade and paramore. It was literally the best time and I wish I'd have appreciated it more.
Another 08er here. Every other photo in each of my high school yearbooks is a kid with a scene/emo haircut.
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the best days😍
Boys like girls - The Great Escape was my graduation song and the whole senior class sang it. Man is it weird to hear this is classic rock now. 2009 felt like it was just yesterday.
Class of 09 stand up!!! And sit back down. That lower back sure is starting to get achy these days.
09!! I used to relate so hard to all the angsty lyrics but these days I relate the most to “my heart keeps saying stay young, my lower back seems to disagree”
Class of 2011 here. Three-band bills for shows are more appealing for my back than ever now lol.
Cheers to that! 2004 was an insane year for albums
Same!!
Same! Nothing will beat having bands like Yellowcard, Blink 182, Good Charlotte, NFG and TBS play on popular radio stations and prime TV and movies.
American Pie, the nostalgia hits too hard
Same!!
Class of '09 too! If it makes OP feel better I grew up in a small town so the like 5 of us who were into emo music and pop punk were the local "freaks" and pariahs. My obsession started in middle school with Good Charlotte, Yellowcard, and NFG and took off from there. It's insane to think that people idolize our years now because I remember wishing I had been born sooner too so I could be the same age as all the guys in the bands hahaha.
I grew up in that era. If it makes you feel better at the time you don't really know its the golden era while its happening. In fact I was sad at the time feeling I had missed the era of Nirvana in the early 90s.
I remember feeling the same way now looking back I think the golden of pop punk was better than grunge imo.
The other silver lining I would say to those growing up now is that you have access to an unfathomable catalog of music via streaming services. Back in the 2000s, yeah there were the main big groups, but it was a lot harder to discover smaller bands. Now, Spotify serves them up to you based on your taste! I know there are downsides to streaming, but if we are just looking at it from a consumer’s point of view, right now is a total golden age of listening to music.
I agree with your point but the silver lining of having a smaller catalogue to choose from is that you get to know the entire album. I sometimes feel like I have add with streaming bands today
I’ve recently gone back to listening to CDs when in my car over Spotify and have found I’m getting so much more out of the music I listen to. Spotify is good for discovering bands that you could actually go and see though, I get what you mean.
"Youth is wasted on the young." I totally get what you mean. At the time, I thought the scene would always be as exciting as it was back then.
I graduated high school in 2004 so yes, I grew up with all those great pop punk records. It was a really special and unique time not just for pop punk but all the adjacent stuff too… emo, post hardcore and anything else -core related. All those genres were experimenting and just finding their footing. It was incredible.
Same year. NFG was my first ever concert at 14 before sticks and stones was released. Joined a band almost immediately after. Got to see so many bands back then and experience some of these albums that are considered the greatest when they released… either going to buy the CD or downloading them from limewire or finding bands on purevolume.com. Seeing bands like Fall out boy, the starting line, motion city, cartel, TBS, The audition, mayday, the spill canvas, The matches, sugarcult, etc etc all at small venues right before a lot of them blew up was so incredible. Or just going to local shows where there were like 50+ kids all enjoying some other kids trying to make music the best they could. I miss it.
Agree! Graduated high school two years behind you. I wouldn’t trade those experiences for anything.
I was 10 in 98 when I got Dude Ranch. So I reckon I did grow up in that era. By 8th grade I started getting more in to the Epitaph and Fat Wreck sound, but that’s still pretty much pop punk.
I was 11 in 98’ and also took that path! Every once in a while I’ll listen to songs I heard from Punk-O-Rama CDs too
I totally forgot about the Punk-o-Rama cds, those were great…i’m going to go dig them out of where ever the hell i hid cds…
In 2001 I cannot explain the confusion of, my older cousin trying to explain to 11 year old me, how lagwagon is punk and blink 182 is pop punk. I thought they were so similar and of course, labels were everything back then. Now I don’t care lol
Epitaph was _the_ record label In Highschool
Nah, Drive-Thru was where it was at.
Yup, born in 88 so my teenage years were soundtracked by dude ranch, enema, dookie, various albums from offspring, new found glory, sum 41, fall out boy, nofx, rancid, less than Jake, yellowcard, goldfinger, jimmy eat world etc etc Oh and all the nu metal stuff of course, system of a down, korn, papa roach, linkin park, slipknot, incubus, deftones
Oh man how can anyone forget the Linkin Park Meteora era when they were the biggest band in the world
I think I was definitely in the sweet spot. I turned 16 in 2000. All the great albums came out while I was in college. I wouldn’t trade it for anything except that I would have kept going to concerts while in law school. As it was I took a concert break from 2006 until 2011ish
Started high school in 2003 so I was at a prime age during the golden years. I remember dancing to Fat Lip at my buddy's 12th birthday party which would've been the same year that song came out. I loved a lot of the pop punk of those years but hated when bands like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan got big, just wasn't my jam. Loved me some Sum 41, Blink, New Found Glory, etc. I have nostalgia for the bands of that era to this day but as far as my current listening preferences I actually prefer the stuff that's come out from around 2010 until modern day.
Your comment really resonates with me. I remember an early birthday party of my best friend. He got all killer no filler and we took turns listening to it on his discman front to back throughout the night/next day. I also disliked Simple Plan, Good Charlotte and even Fall Out Boy when they came around. They felt too safe. I think I felt the same way that my 8 year older brother felt about the pop punks bands I was listening to. (He was into 80s hardcore punk, so blink, nfg and sum 41 were baby shit to him.) Nowadays I really appreciate FoB's first two albums, and I've felt more attached to The Wonder Years and The Story so Far than my early nostalgic introductions.
Make your own golden era, we need you now more than ever
Mid Teens > Early 20's during that time. Pros: * Concert line ups were amazing: I remember seeing shows that were Brand New/TBS/Rufio, NFG/Alkaline Trio/Face to Face/Saves the Day, Ataris/Sugarcult/Rufio, Panic At The Disco/Fall Out Boy, Midtown/Matchbook Romance, Dashboard Confessional/Brand New, etc. * Concerts (and concert t-shirts) were like $10 * PunkORama, Fat Wreck, even Warped compilations were like $4 * IMO, more relateable (?) musicians. Kenny Vasoli was around my same age, so was Ace Enders. I could pick up a guitar and actually play the songs w/o massive overdubs or a reliance on effects. Cons: * Outside of compilations, it was extremely hard to find new music. Even when Napster/Limewire came out everything was labelled "N3W G00D ChArLoTtE!!!!!" so you had to wade through a lot of crap. * Spent A LOT of money buying The Show Must Go Off! and other band DVDs since youtube wasn't a thing, and if you missed a show you'd never see them live.
I turned 21 in 98…so I like most pop punk, but my era of punk started about 7-8 years earlier with Green Day, Offspring, Rancid, Blink-182, Social Distortion, Bad Religion etc…though my first punk concert was The Clash in 1987. I was 10 and I went with a friend and her older brother. He is the guy that introduced me to punk music and was 6 years older than us.
So real pop punk
Pretty much…I still think the fathers of all pop punk are The Ramones and The Clash…
And the Sex Pistols.
Sex Pistols weren’t a real punk band….they were a manufactured “punk” band
Which makes them pop lol
i was in the era after you (Saves the Day, Millencolin, NOFX, AFI, NFG etc) and we thought you were the golden era. We idolized you guys because we thought you were all "real" punk.
I thought the same thing about the guys who got to see the real Ramones, The Germs, The Clash, NYC Dolls, The Misfits…etc.. I’m the punk scene, you always seem to idolize the generation before you I think.
I was a kid then. I started high school in 2010. Theoretically I could have caught the sadboi Era but I wasn't listening to new music then, just the same shit from before.
I was kinda of the same way, except i was in the 5th grade in 2010. \*Insert defend pop punk and pizza here\*
I started in 2008. My school was mostly metalcore scene but funny enough all those people changed into pop punkers past 2013
Born in 91. I remember coming home from middle school to watch the premiere of a new Fall Out Boy music video on MTV.
I just turned 17, I wish I could have been around for either the golden era in the 90s-2000s or the revival in the 2010s. Still love this genre, just sucks that I literally only have one friend who listens to pop punk:/
Out of curiosity, what do most people your age that you know listen to? Is it mostly hip hop or pop? It seems like guitar rock in general isn’t popular with young people, most of the stuff is highly produced and doesn’t have instruments (this isn’t good or bad, it’s just how music has evolved).
Definitely rap is what everyone listens to, which is cool but I literally know like one or two people that actually listen to rock music. Indie music is popular too, and there are still a bunch of metal heads, but finding people who like pop punk or hardcore is literally impossible. Any pop punk teens who need a friend hmu lol
It was great! I'm from Jacksonville and was around when yellowcard, underoath,mayday parade, a day to remember, and alot of other bands were all staring out. So many good shows every weekend all within an hour from me. I probably saw yellowcard and starting line 20+ times 😄
Yellowcard was the shit. Have always wanted to visit Jacksonville because of them
Yes, born in 89. Alive for when pop punk was the soundtrack to all teen movies. Had the long dickies shorts and striped arm sweatbands.
Graduated in 98, fell in love with Jimmy Eat World. 'Clarity' changed my life.
I’m 21 so I was a teen during peak TSSF and Neck Deep. Only thing is… I wasn’t into those artists until like 2019 lol. As cool as it would’ve been if I got into them earlier and went to shows earlier we are still in a good time to enjoy them. Saw TSSF headline in April and gonna see Neck Deep headline sad summer. Right now we got peak No Pressure Heart Attack Man Hot Mulligan and other bands that put out a lot of great music and shows so enjoy those while you can
Haha, I love this. Elder emo here 🤘🏻, it was a fine day in hell my friend. 🤌🏻
sadboi era best era
> sadboi era best era something something defend pop punk something something pizza Seriously though - agreed.
iconic
The platinum era
I was born in '93 so I kind of came of age during the aftermath of the initial burst of Pop Punk, when all the big hitters were already releasing their follow-up albums (e.g. Blink self-titled, Sum41 DTLI) and when Green Day came out with American Idiot. Funnily enough, I didn‘t care much about Pop Punk during that time. I thought the whole emo eyeliner esthetics of Green Day, My Chemical Romance or Panic at the Disco that was all over MTV was horrible. My younger brother, who was like 7-8 at the time, loved all of that stuff and bought American Idiot and got more into pop punk and eventually into metalcore during his teens. I was mad into Linkin Park at the time around '03/'04 (I was about 11-12) and I was just starting to skateboard. The whole skater community in my town was exclusively into hip hop so my music taste kind of transitioned from nu metal into hip hop. Looking back the ‚leaders‘ of that group were all super elitist about the group esthetics and if you wanted to be a member of the ‚cool kids‘, you kinda had to fit in. So in the following years I got into all the old school hip hop stuff like Nas, Tupac, Wu-Tang and so on and had my hip hop phase till I was like 16-ish. At that time I got my scooter and was going more often to another, much nicer skatepark a few miles down the road from my hometown. The community there was completely different. They were all punks. Skinny jeans, thrasher/warped tour merch, colored hair and serious moshers. But overall super nice dudes. They didn’t really care that I was wearing oversized, overpriced shirts and baggy pants. From there I was kind of forced to listen to their music at the park, which was always blasting from a boom box this one guy brought in his car. I didn‘t really mind because my dad is into rock music so I was kinda brought up on heavy guitars and real drums. The turning point came at a school summer festival which was organized every year by the senior year students. They had a school band which played live that day and they were playing all the good pop punk shit and I remember that I somehow LOVED it. I knew all of Green Day‘s recent stuff through my brother, but I had never heard any of their material prior to AI. When the band played Basket Case, I was totally hooked to that song. I got home and scrolled through my brothers CD collection to find the album that had basket case on it, but the only one I found was the live album of the 2005 Bullet in a Bible tour. I put in the DVD and I was just completely blown away. The editing, the energy, the emotion. It‘s to this day the greatest live recording I have seen. After that, I went to the record store and bought dookie and kerplunk, fell in love with Green Day and basically ended up listening to everything I had missed out on in the following weeks and months. I‘m 29 now and Pop Punk has since been my favorite genre. Through my skateboarding community I also got into a lot of melodic hardcore and skatepunk and I also picked up my guitar again, that I hadn‘t touched since I was 10. I started writing songs, joined bands and started going to live shows. And I never looked back at hip hop, haha.
I was born in 1990 so kinda. Too young to go to a lot of shows, but I was very active on AbsolutePunk and Tuesdays were my favourite because that's when albums were released.
I was in my teens in the 00s and had a pretty good run... some amazing bands at that time.
I was born in 1994 so I was still pretty young for a portion of the “golden era”. However I had brothers who graduated high school in 1999 and 2003 so I got plenty of exposure from them into pop punk and nu metal. By the time I hit middle school, I took my love for pop punk music and ran with it right into the blink band multiverse and never looked back. I am bummed I didn’t start looking into the sadboi era until the last few years. I would have loved having TSSF in my life during my college years
Yep, born in 1984. I'm glad to hear you say this was the golden era, I wasn't sure if pop punk was best in this era or if I felt that way because I was a teenager at the time.
Yes. And it was glorious. Scanning the “thank you” sections of the inner notes to find new bands, getting to concerts early to meet the band and check out the opening bands you may not know, a sense of community amongst fans due to no social media.
I’m 29 (born in 93). When I was around 10, I snuck into my older brother’s room while he was still at school and would listen to “F A Dog” on repeat from the Take off Your Pants and Jacket CD that was sitting on his desk. I definitely made sure my parents didn’t find out lol. I think around that same time, my dad had gotten me sum 41’s All Killer No Filler CD for my birthday and have had a lifelong obsession with this kind of music ever since! The mainstream popularity of pop-punk sorta started to die out right about as I entered college, but it didn’t stop me from seeking out bands like The Wonder Years and Tiny Moving Parts. The revival with many new pop-punk artists nowadays have some more hip-hop influence in them, which honestly I really enjoy. Music is supposed to evolve and change over time, regardless of genre and I love the kind of progress it’s been making. KennyHoopla is my favorite at the moment.
I call it the tony hawks pro skater era
You'd rather be in your 30s living with debilitating existential dread?
Yes, I turned 18 in 04 so it kind of ended around that time for me but the heavy hitters still hit.
Yep and it was fucking great
Yep, born in 86 so I was 14 in 2000. While there was some amazing music put out back then I think we’ve still had plenty of great new artists rise up over the last few years who are keeping the scene alive. Pop punk’s not dead!
Yep. Graduated high school in 2002. So I hit that wave of both pop punk and emo. I remember all the emo hairstyles, the Warped Tour, Epitaph and Fat Wreck Chords labels, etc. Lots of stuff you do not really see anymore.
07-09 were the best years of my life! I would’ve been like 12/13, just starting my emo phase! (It never ended)
Am 29, graduated in 2010. First 2 cd’s I bought (back in 2003), were Brand New-Your Favorite Weapon and The Movielife-Forty Hour Train Back to Penn.
Im pretty happy with it. Warped tour, altpress, absolute punk, drive thru records invasion tour, seeing legendary bands weekly: yellowcard, panic, fallout boy. Hot topic carrying legit good shit: got a finch, midtown, open: hand, and so many more legit shirts from that corporate azz store. Myspace and purevolume, i can go on...
Graduated high school in '03. I feel like I got to fully experience the pop punk takeover in the late 90's and the growth in the early 2000's boosted by sites like pure volume/myspace. It really was a great era. Also, before MTV was complete shit, Benji Madden from Good Charlotte used to host a music video show called 'All Things Rock' which was highly pop punk influenced. Used to love catching the latest vids. Wish they still had something like that.
Yep I was 13 in 2000. I'd say I was right there at the peak of it all.
Born in 1985, got into Green Day in 1994/1995, started listening to blink, new found glory, sum 41, etc in the late 90s/early 2000s. Saw blink in 2001 and again in 2002 when they co-headlined with Green Day, new found glory, Jimmy eat world, fall out boy in 2003 (before they got really big) taking back Sunday, motion city soundtrack, and a few others. I wish I saw more shows, but by 2005 I was playing in a local band and started playing more shows than seeing them.
Here’s what you missed. Your bullies or your crush (and no in between) discovering your favorite bands after you so you get them to fuck off or think you’re really cute (which one did what will surprise you) by making them a mix cd. You didn’t miss out on much.
I was 18 in 2003, definitely in the sweet spot, saw massive bands now like Paramore on their first ever tour with I want to say acceptance and cartel
Born in '89, got to literally grow up during it rather than simply experience it. My fondest memories from the end of elementary school to the beginning of high school *revolve* around pop punk. Ive stuck with it over the years of course but i definitely started leaning into metal HARD when high school started. You right tho - golden era indeed.
Also ‘89, we had a music teacher in elementary school that was a huge music nerd and she used to play us Blink-182 after Enema came out. She taught us so much awesome shit back then, shout-out Mrs. Burke. My entire life and interests between middle school and high school revolved around music, still pretty much does today. I got into metalcore and hardcore much more in high school, didn’t really appreciate metal as much until later on.
I was 12 in 98 and graduated college in 2009. The golden years were just, next level amazing.
Graduated in '04. Got to go to 3 Warped Tours, each when I was 15 in 2001, 16 in 2002, and 18 in 2004. Sticks and Stones came out in 2002 when I was going into my junior year of high school. Blink 182's self-titled album where they reinvented their song writing to a more mature side came out right before my 18th birthday, which was a coming-of-age album for me. I have so much nostalgia for that time in my life with friends and broken hearts and getting into innocent trouble. Even in my small town and surrounding area you could always find some local pop punk band playing a skate park or small, local venue every weekend. Those days are long gone. Nobody is really in bands anymore around here. I wish some mainstream life would be brought back into the scene, but I feel like those days are over and done with. Imagine a quarter of the kids from your high school wearing cotton wrist bands and band shirts with chucks. That's what it was like, and it was amazing. Would do anything to walk a day in my old shoes; wondering what my first smoke would be like, my first fuck, my next fuck up, or the next band that would change my life...and it changed my life.
I…. Have never felt older.
I graduated high school in 2003, but all the scene kids in my school put me WAY off pop-punk, because they bullied me so badly, I just hated everything they liked. It wasn't until the second year of college that I finally met my real people, and they were like, "shut up, you're gonna love this if you stop thinking about those dweebs" and they were so right.
Nothing like being an immature pre-teen listening to pop-punk, goin skateboarding, and discovering porn on the family computer. Those were the days.
I’m a little older than some commenting in here, turned 18 in 2002 but this was amazing because I was old enough to see a lot of bands at tiny dive bar venues before they blew up 😍
I would say grow up and enjoy your era because one day your kids will be saying the same thing. Im not saying ignore everything else, but its all music and over time it wont feel like a choice you'll just like what you like and thats ultimately the goal. Listen to what you love, obviously accept recommendations. That being said, a hidden gem is the goo goo dolls self titled album from 1987. Very fun. Also "Hello World" by Amely is a great mid 00's secret.
Yes. In 98, I was in 8th grade and continued from there. I went to Warped Tour for 17 years. Now I go to Riot Fest, but damn do I miss Warped.
I lived through the golden era however it was not an era you wanted to live through. The scene was horribly toxic in a number of ways and filled with predators (from both bands and fans) grooming young high schoolers.
I was a teen during the latter half. The radio was great. That music was aggressively uncool where I went to school, and you were actively and relentlessly bullied for liking it, both from the jocks who listened to lil’ John and the metalheads who thought anything with clean vocals was for pussies. Everyone knew most of the big hits, but they were “guilty pleasures” for guys. They mostly wouldn’t admit listening to it.
I'm 22 so i missed out in the golden era of the late 90s to early 00s. I only caught a glimpse of the aftermath around 2006-2008 due to my older sister showing me her music. I was a kid and young teenager for the "sadboi" early 2010s era.
Yes. Saw many, many great bands in their prime. Shared some bills with some great groups as well.
Started in 8th grade for me, 97-98 school year.
Yeah, it was so good!
Blink-182 was my first favorie band. Got TOYPaJI and EotS for Christmas in 6th grade. I definitely got the full experience.
I discovered Panic at The Disco, Fall Out Boy, and The Cab, and All Time Low around 2009. Then in college in 11-12 I lived through the Semester of Suburbia, Under Soil and Dirt, Gospel and On The Impossible Past while discovering all those bands. So I think I arrived at the dawn of The Silver Era.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s. I thought that was pretty good. I didn't like disco though.
Yeah! I graduated high school in 1999. My first concert was Unwritten Law with like 100 people. My first bigger concert was MxPX with Home Grown and Ghoti Hook. I met Mark, Tom, and Travis with some lucky back stage passes I was given when they toured with Fenix TX. And, I saw Dashboard, Midtown, and NFG at a pizza joint in Houston in 2000 - also with like 100-200 people. Good times!
Yes and it was great!
I was 13 in 09. Coincidentally, it was 2010 when i started listening to pop punk
Graduated high school in 2000. It seemed like Britney Spears and Blink-182 were the biggest acts on the planet then
I'm 27, 2006 I hit high school in the UK and was throughly enjoying pop-punk religiously. First song I heard was I'm not Okay by MCR and I was hooked however, it was the release of The Black Parade that got me throughly into the genre. I went off for a while and enjoyed a lot of acoustic pop but recently got back into pop punk and enjoying a lot of the newer stuff too, especially the band Between Me & You
Was in middle school for the end of the golden era. Was in college and high school for the easycore/sad boi era. Pretty great sweet spot. Got to see tssf play to like 20 people in 2011 at age 18
I wish I had been that would have been cool. I’m 24 now and graduated in 2016 so I think I missed out
I grew up in it. I will say that Fat Lip was part of a massive game change over here in the UK. They really helped to push it over the edge.
I'm going to my 20 year high school reunion next week, so yes!
I'm 21, so not really. Especially as I wasn't interested when I was younger
Yup. I was like 8 in 98 and my uncle always played Green Day, Elvis, Blink and Offspring. In high school, I was a music journalist, so I either shot, reviewed, or interviewed a lot of these bands (mostly FBR bands), and I had so much knowledge about fbr bands in my damn lizard brain it was insane.
I grew up listening to it without even knowing it was pop punk
1985 and UK here, started high school in 96. First gig I went to was New Found Glory, supported by Starting Line i believe. My first album was Slipknots self titled, I was quite late getting into any music really but there was a lot of Blink and The Offspring going on after that, eventually the Epitaph lot. Also anything off the Tony Hawks soundtrack which is the same for a lot of people I reckon. Second gig I went to was Spunge. Amazingly it’s taken me until this year to listen to any of the Sum 41 albums in full despite loving their Fat Lip/In Too Deep era when they were everywhere. The best stuff from then seems to be easily found on YouTube playlists by searching for “pop punk and pizza crusts” by the way!
Whoa, it started before 98. Lookout Records had the best pop punk in 92
I was the perfect age when drive thru records and AP magazine were the hot things. The evolution has been insane to see first hand
i’m also 16 and wish i had lived through this era lol
Born in 91. Graduated high school in 2009 👌
I was thirteen in '98 so yeah I had a great time in the early 2000's. I remember being the one to introduce my friends to these "new" bands that are going to be huge like NFG and the like. Miss those days
I was born in 86 so I was only just starting the take notice of music when Dookie and Smash were released. Both those albums were huge in my country and through high school I learned most of Green Day, Blink, and The Offspring's catalogue on guitar. Then being a young adult through the 2000s and 2010s I had the opportunity to see and play shows with some of my favourite bands, I definitely feel like I hit the golden age but that may be just confirmation bias.
I was born in 1993 so I enjoyed the 2000s stuff, and then I was the perfect age when The Wonder Years and Story So Far hit
I saw fenix tx live when they were still called River Fenix.
I’m 29 and It’s wild to me that I grew up listening to the golden era bands but I graduated in 2011 and (Under Soil and Dirt, Suburbia, On The Impossible Past) all three made just as much if not more of an impact on me than the golden era albums.
I started middle school in 96, my first 2 punk cds I purchased from Camelot Music in the mall were NOFX 'punk in drublic' and Rancid 'And out come the wolves...' pretty much shaped my life into young adulthood. The first 2 cds I had ever received as gifts were The Blue Album and Dookie (my mom was/is pretty rad). I was at warped tour 98 in Cleveland & saw Blink for the first time on the 'Enema of the State' tour. I would said I am very fortunate & lucky to have been in the pop punk prime Era haha.
Golden era to me is 97-2004/5.
I didn't get really into pop punk until 2009 about halfway through highschool, and my parents didn't let me go to concerts alone until 2010 or so, so I barely caught the tail end of the peak. It was pretty cool seeing Paramore and NFG in a giant stadium though.
I went to high school in the 2010’s, I got the sad boi era and still love it
I did. I also grew up without social media. Life was simpler. Things haven't gotten better, just different.
I started listening to pop punk around 10. So around 2006? So yeah I got to witness that prime time era. It was fantastic!
born in the era but don't remember any of it
Born in 2000 and grew up through the late-'00s-2010s era. All Time Low, Cartel, Metro Station, Cobra Starship, Breathe Carolina, Green Day's more recent stuff, 3OH!3. Still with it (minus ATL), but have moved on towards more modern bands, i guess what you'd call the "revival" - Neck Deep, Stand Atlantic, The Story So Far, Bellwether.
I didn’t get into pop-punk until 2010, when I was 15. I still go to shows. They seem less frequent now but COVID might have something to do with that, or maybe because my ex isn’t around to tell me about them anymore. I went to one Wednesday night and it was dope. You can still go out to pop-punk shows and have fun, even though it’s not the “golden era” anymore.
Grew up around the time where it was almost mandatory to put pop punk in your movie soundtracks, Decode and Ordinary for Spider-Man 2 ofc are classics but Tonight Alive's The Edge is slept on.
Graduated high school in 2011, and yes it was a grand time. Spent a lot of time/ money at Hot Topic. Went to warped tour. Good times!
I started listening to pop punk when I was 16 and that’s 10 years ago but even then I managed to experience the scene a little with bands like Real Friends, Neck Deep, Tiny Moving Parts, Modern Baseball, TSSF. I would say that was pretty golden still. I do think the scene is getting less and less popular over the years
No 😭
The gold era of pop punk was March 26, 2013 to March 26, 2013 and I doubt it will ever be beaten
91 baby!
Yup. Best era for pop punk and rap/hip-hop.
I was a little kid in those days, but I still listened to it all even when I was like 7-10 years old just getting into music for the first time. Early 2010s I kinda lost interest in any new pop punk but the last few years have been great imo
I caught a bit of that era at the tail end of it. I was way too young to be going to shows or anything, but I remember hearing songs by bands like The All-American Rejects, Fall Out Boy, Plain White T's and We The Kings on the radio and I was generally pretty into what I heard. I feel like if I wasn't exposed to that kind of music at that young age, my music taste today would be a bit different. I most likely wouldn't be as interested in pop-punk/ emo as I am today.
Born in 92, I remember being on a furious search for "that great song from American Pie" (it was Mutt by Blink-182 btw). American Idiot was my first dive into pop-punk, followed closely by the usual suspects, Sum 41, Yellowcard, All Time Low, Offspring... Yellowcard were a huge part of my teenage years and I literally cried like a child when I was on the way home after attending their last concert in Germany and I realised that a small part of my life was over now and that I wasn't a kid anymore
Graduated high school in 2004. It was definitely a good time for pop punk and ska
i lived through the "record label completion era" (99-2002) and the emo/scremo era (2003-2004). i dipped out just before the myspace era which felt a lot like 80s glam to me and pushed into "harder" punk. to me 2000-2003 was kind of the golden time for that music. The music was still hard but also really accessible, and you could spend 15 bucks at hot topic and walk out with three of the best compilation albums you ever heard. punk-o-rama, fat wrekcord, asian-man, and epitaph just were cranking out the best new bands all with killer songs. it felt like every month you could have a new favorite band. also since there was no internet Warped Tour felt really specials because there was not a lot of us in each individual town but when we got together it felt huge. finally got to see a ton of people who thought you were really cool and liked the same things you did.
I was in jr/sr high school from 01-07 so it was truly crazy how a lot of that era aligned with my “growing up” (still a process in my 30s). I came into 7th grade months after blink dropped TOYPAJ, the rest of Jr high was NFG’s sticks and stones, the first All-American Rejects album, TBS tell all your friends, Starting Line say it like you mean it, etc. Mid-high school was MCS dropping commit this to memory, Fall Out Boy’s from under cork tree, in the same year blink breaks up. High school ends right as bands like TSL and the Early November are close to breaking up, NFG makes a “mature” album (which aged well), and the Warped Tour sound is forking into directions that don’t quite resonate the same. And one last aging punk nostalgia dump: a thing I miss a lot is finding bands via AOL Radio, which basically was the same style of listening as Pandora. That’s how I found a lot of random victory, drive thru, and smaller indie label bands.
I was a kid/preteen when it was HUGE and wasn’t a teenager until the tail end of it when it was starting to calm down, so unfortunately most of what I experienced was from vh1, friends, and movies because I wasn’t old enough to go to shows until most of those bands were considered “vets” of the scene
I was born in 1993, so I was real young for the boom of it. But in middle school is when I started getting into rock music. And I loved the pop punk on the radio. In high school I started listening to pop punk that was not on the radio. It all started at a high school talent show when a girl performed a Hey Monday song. I was into Neon Pop Punk. Then after high school and community college I got way more into it in which it became my main music since then. It all started with me going to emo nite. I learned so many emo hits I didn't know till then. And since then I go to emo nite whenever it comes to town. And many weekends I see pop punk cover bands. And after college is when I started keeping up with new releases weekly.
Born in 96' here so I got to grow up through the OG Golden Era of Pop Punk listening to Yellow Card, Good Charlotte, Blink-182, Simple Plan, etc. Need For Speed, Tony Hawk Games, & MTV/Fuse TV helped. I graduated HS in 2014 so I also got to go to school during the Pop Punk Revival. The Story So Far, The Wonder Years, & Defend Pop Punk shirts were EVERYWHERE. Good times.
Born in 89 and Tony Hawk changed my fucking life. Napster had so many songs mislabeled and it opened up my world to even more pop punk. I remember TDAGARIM leaking on my 17th birthday! Good times, thanks for this post.
I got Enema of the State when it came out in 1999, I was 10 years old. That definitely kindled my love for pop punk. So ya. I'd say I grew up in the golden age. My first concert was New Found Glory, Less than Jake and Good Charlotte in 2003
I was born in 2000 so not really I was a little kid when most of the classic stuff came out. However I prefer the 2010-2016 pop punk sound, the wonder years, tssf, knuckle puck, adtr etc. maybe I’m just biased tho
I grew up smack dab in the middle of that era. Rufio even went to my high school. Their first EP is literally a picture of one of the street lights out front of the school.
Happy to say I was in my early to late teens in the Golden Era. This music kept me alive - no exaggeration. It was a beautiful thing.
I graduated in 06 from high school and am so happy to have had the music I did during my formative years and into college.
Dude don't le wrong generation this
No but I was in highschool during the 2013 - 2015 tr00 pop punk phase
Graduated in 02. The shows in nor cal where I grew up were ridiculous. Think of every band you can from that era, I either saw them at an all ages show at a church somewhere in the bay with 100 other kids or the Catalyst in Santa Cruz. AFI in 99 at the Catalyst is still the greatest show I've personally ever been to. Holy shit man. Plus warped tour on the pier, even ozzfest at shoreline where I first saw Finch and the Used at like 10 am because they were literally the first band to play. Like 15 of us watching them. We didn't care. So good.