When looking at contemporary pop culture, there is one thing that is evident: nostalgia plays a huge role in what is currently popular. An oxymoron? Perhaps, yet there is plenty of evidence to support the idea that most of our current interests are reiterations of what was popular in the past. I mean, Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour grossed over $1 billion with performances laden with Swift’s early music. Some of the top grossing films of 2023 include The Little Mermaid, Wonka, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. What do all of these films have in common? They’ve all been made before.
One particular genre of music has seen a resurgence as of late: pop punk. It seems that every bar in every major city has dedicated one of its evenings to early 2000s jams. While there are plenty of things we can credit for this resurgence, Billie Joe Armstrong seems to credit one particular outlet for the revival of pop punk. In an interview with The Guardian, according to Loudwire, the Green Day singer made the claim that TikTok has done much to fuel this fire.
“I think streaming and the way things go viral now…There’s this new algorithmic way of discovering new stuff. It’s really prevalent in rock music…”
While there will always be qualms about the internet’s impact on the music industry, there is no doubt that many bands have benefitted from this comeback. Bands like Blink-182 and Paramore both enjoyed some of the grandest tours off 2023, and we can definitely credit the internet’s ability to project that nostalgia onto us all.
Photo: Mehreen Rizvi
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