14 items
The perfect parody disguised as a perfect pop song. Blink-182 conquered TRL and the Billboard Hot 100 by mocking the very boy-band videos they shared the countdown with, with a "na-na-na-na" hook so contagious it rewired a million brains. Won Best Group Video at the 2000 MTV VMAs and became the guitar riff every beginner learned.
The Canadian pop-punk singer who defined early-2000s teen rebellion with a necktie knotted over a tank top, chain wallets, and an I-don't-care-what-you-think attitude. Her 2002 debut Let Go crashed onto radio with "Complicated" and "Sk8er Boi"—instant anthems—and positioned her as the voice of a generation of mall-goers who wanted to be skaters but shopped at Abercrombie. Follow-ups Under My Skin and The Best Damn Thing kept her reign solid through 2007.
Pop-punk pioneers who mixed juvenile toilet humor with real melodic craft and suburban-teen honesty. From scrappy San Diego garage band to first punk album atop the Billboard 200. Their untitled third album was the moodier reinvention; the hiatus in 2005 felt less like goodbye and more like a pause in a story everyone knew would resume.
Pop-punk's sneakiest hit started as an SR-71 album track before Bowling for Soup rebuilt it into a double-Platinum sing-along about a suburban mom stuck in the era of "Springsteen, Madonna, way before Nirvana." The cruel joke wrote itself: the song about being nostalgic for the wrong decade is now the thing you're nostalgic for.
Pete Wentz's swoopy black fringe, Patrick Stump's soaring voice, and song titles that ran on forever. "Sugar, We're Goin Down" ruled TRL and Warped Tour, making Fall Out Boy the pop-punk face of the MySpace era.
The Madden twins in eyeliner, sneering at celebrities while becoming celebrities — Good Charlotte's "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" and "The Anthem" were the sound of every mall, mixtape, and middle-school rebellion of 2003. Waldorf, Maryland's finest export.
![Video thumbnail — Panic! At The Disco: I Write Sins Not Tragedies [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/vc6vs-l5dkc/hqdefault.jpg)
The song that was everywhere in 2006, with the earworm chorus radio had to censor. Brendon Urie in a ringmaster's top hat, a circus crashing a wedding, and enough theatrical energy to define an era of emo-pop — every kid noticed what the stations cut out and learned the uncensored lyrics anyway.
![Video thumbnail — My Chemical Romance - Welcome To The Black Parade [Official Music Video] [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RRKJiM9Njr8/maxresdefault.jpg)
The eyeliner-and-marching-band emo icons behind The Black Parade. Formed in New Jersey after 9/11, MCR gave every mid-2000s teenager an anthem — "Welcome to the Black Parade," "Helena," "I'm Not Okay" — and a look.
Pop-punk with a violin section of one. Yellowcard's signature song only reached #37 on the Hot 100, but it went double Platinum and became the era's defining leave-this-town anthem — named for a street that doesn't quite exist.
Three voices trading off one bratty anthem — "storming through the party like my name was El Niño." It ruled MTV and every skate video in 2001, went 2× Platinum, and the band never even meant for it to be a single.
Stillwater, Oklahoma's hook machine. Tyson Ritter and Nick Wheeler wrote the songs wedged in every 2000s head — 'Swing, Swing,' 'Dirty Little Secret,' 'Move Along,' 'It Ends Tonight' — and then closed the decade with the most cheerful-sounding kiss-off ever recorded, 'Gives You Hell.'
An affirmation dressed as a rock anthem — "don't write yourself off yet" — from a band that had just been dropped by its label and instead stumbled into its biggest moment. It climbed all the way to #5 on the Hot 100 and soundtracked every awkward kid's 2002.
The traveling punk-rock summer camp of the parking lot: one cheap ticket for a full day of bands, a sunburn, and a merch tent where your favorite unsigned act was selling their own shirts. For a generation of pop-punk and emo kids, Warped Tour was the pilgrimage that made the scene feel like a nation.
The lead single that announced blink-182 had arrived, with a melody so immediate it felt like it already existed. A five-minute kitchen-floor composition that would define the band and give them their first MTV staple. The line "nobody likes you when you're 23" became the most quotable moment in pop-punk, even though Mark Hoppus was 26 when he wrote it.