“I’m sick of 17, where’s my fucking teenage dream?” wonders a teenage girl with pink buns in pigtails, who finds the promised “golden years” extremely “cruel”. Three kids running around in the same socks boldly declare that “No one loves you when you’re 23” and they find it difficult to accept their age, despite the advice of friends.

These two post-adolescent cases may be separated by two decades and roughly two generations, but what unites them (circularly) is greater than what separates them. OUR Olivia Rodrigo may have no claim to pure pop punk Blink-182, she’s nonetheless a Disney Channel Girl who, with last year’s debut “Sour,” has become one of Generation Z’s fastest-rising pop stars, packing jarring pop-punk flares into her pop package.

We can go back a little more if we want to find the roots of both: in the ironic “welcome to paradise” Green Day and Billie Joe Armstrong to whom adult life seemed too difficult not to signal danger to his mother, but this, too, “The Kids Are Not Alright” from Offspring.

A few days ago, the trio Blink-182, who raised the American Pie generation, announced his reunion with his classic line-up (i.e. with “UFO hunter” Tom DeLonge in their ranks) have big plans for 2023 that include an international tour and a new album – “the best album of their career”, according to the band’s guitarist and vocalist.

They can be quickly “attributed” to the general and vague, but all-pervading nostalgia that is typical of our time. But the most observant and with the necessary searches in their Spotify history will realize that the ’00s didn’t just return to flared jeans or Britney Spears nods from pop stars like Rina Sawayama. But some of the “children with guitars” found their expression in power chords, melodic choruses, suffocating slurred lyrics. In other words, we are living in a pop punk renaissance.

See, for example, Machine gun “Kelly. Where he always had an auto-tune ready, he gradually put aside the trap and shouldered his guitar, picked up “Tickets to my Downfall”, announced that he was even doing “Mainstream Sellout” with his latest album. And she drew on “daring” fonts and details in all shades of pink – as once Avril lavigne, when she swapped baggy pants for plaid skirts and sang “Girlfriend”.

Among the releases of recent years, you may not find names that rank as high in the festival bills as the ones mentioned above, but no one doubts that there are those who honor pop punk. That’s what they do too Pinkshift who traveled from Baltimore and released singles and EPs over the past year, keeping the genre alive and heavy on their sound with grunge elements. Meet me at the Altar Again, also introduced to us in recent years, they keep things simple and play pop punk, old, orthodox, with an emo essence, taken straight from the depths of the 00s.

Why pop punk and why now? Many attribute this resurgence to the fact that the isolation from the pandemic and the surrounding atmosphere have made doom scrolling an integral part of our daily lives and thus strengthened feeling of worthlessness which is in many ways the thematic constant of pop punk. And then, indeed, the quarantine period made us think a little, we perceived time differently and so suddenly, past -when we listened to the previous pop punk revival in the first year- got a little more expensive.

This is, of course, what we boomers and millennials say, and as it should be, Generation Z laughs, scrolling up TIK Tak. That is a platform that has become for today’s teenagers and 20-year-olds what radio was for some other generations. And this is because in its music libraries they find and discover music that, if presented to them differently, they would consider archeology.

If someone searches TikTok for a hashtag #poppunk, he will know how 2.5 billion views on the platform – a considerable amount. Something like that “Dear Mary, Count Me” from Low all time took on a second viral life 15 years after its release, and today’s 16 year olds have become familiar with names like Avril lavignefrom paramor, from Simple plan.

And Blink-182 has other reasons for learning. Surely, however, their drummer Travis Barker he made sure that it was not unfamiliar to today’s listeners. His friendship with Machine Gun Kelly isn’t limited to double dates with Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox respectively, but their musical paths have also crossed on tracks like “I think I’m fine” but not only. Barker’s name has also been found alongside names XXXTentacionPost Malone, $uicideboy$, and woke up, the musician signed a contract with his label DTA Records, a TikTok star, jxdn.

As for the “why now”, the cynical answer is that pop culture is going in circles and it’s pop punk’s turn. After all, isn’t what he expresses what teenagers and 20s have always wanted to express? And, going back to the Blink-182 reunion, the familiar figure of Travis Barker could well lead the kids born when the pop-punk trio sang “All The Small Things” to the front rows of their upcoming shows.

And we from the outside, from what seems to say no more “Thank you for the memories”, even if they once said so Fall out Boy.