Five pop-punk songs from the 2000s so bad they feel like parodies
For years, pop-punk has been an insult.
At best, it’s a phase. An affliction you catch young and either work out of your system in favour of more respectable music, or go further down the rabbit hole and move on to so-called “real punk rock“. At worst, it’s an outright con. A perversion of punk rock at its very core that takes a radical form of outsider art and makes it palatable for squares and children. Personally, I couldn’t agree with either of these takes less.
I love pop-punk and find that some of the best and most celebrated punk acts are pop-punk acts in all but name. Ramones, Descendents, and NOFX are all pop-punk bands at their core. The most famous acts of the genre, like Green Day and Paramore, are some of my favourite bands. My Chemical Romance outright are my favourite band of all time. However, that’s not to say that there aren’t moments I can’t see exactly what all those gatekeepers are talking about.
You know how good soul music is, basically the only form of music that everyone can agree is great? Bad pop-punk music is…the opposite. When pop-punk is bad, it’s the kind of bad that makes you question why you ever liked music in the first place, let alone punk rock. Barring the recent revival spurred by the likes of Olivia Rodrigo and KennyHoopla, the last time that pop-punk had a major commercial moment was in the 2000s, which summed up the best and worst of the genre.
When it was good, you had ‘American Idiot’, ‘I’m Not OK (I Promise)’ and ‘Misery Business’. When it was bad, you had this list, where things got so humiliatingly awful that they sounded like parodies of the genre itself. So let’s look at five of the worst pop-punk songs the 2000s ever dropped at our feet, like dying mice from the mouth of your cat.
Five god-awful pop-punk songs from the 2000s:
Good Charlotte – ‘The Anthem’
Let’s get one thing out of the way here: this song sounds rad. Eric Valentine’s production job on ‘The Anthem’, along with all of its parent album, The Young & The Hopeless, is pretty phenomenal. Turning a third-rate bunch of Sum-41 wannabes into superstars by making their by-the-numbers pop-punk sound like glossy, stadium-slaying thoroughbreds by sheer force of will is no joke. It just goes to show, though, with enough time and energy, you really can polish a turd.
Once you get past how enormous it all sounds, ‘The Anthem’ is just embarrassing. The songwriting goes beyond simple into outright basic. No amount of double-tracking can distract from Joel Madden’s complete inability to sing. The final humiliation is the lyrics. Now, with the best will in the world, pop-punk’s appeal has never stemmed from great lyrical flourishes, but when Madden sneers “don’t wanna be you” at the end of the lifeless chorus, he doesn’t sound rebellious or radical; he just sounds smug.
Avril Lavigne – ‘Girlfriend’
I’m sure many of you were expecting one of Avril Lavigne‘s early hits to make this list. At the time, sneering at ‘Sk8er Boi’ or ‘Complicated’ was a surefire line of punk rock cred, and while she’s grown into a beloved icon of millennial culture, there’s still the overriding air of naffness when it comes to her work. Well, joke’s on you. The singles from Let Go all rule without exception. Then her second album was a comparative disappointment. The first single from her third album had to be a smash hit on the level of her first, and well, you can’t say that it wasn’t.
‘Girlfriend’ is everything that every stuck-up, gatekeeping douchebag sneered about her early work and then some. It’s not endearingly cheeky, it’s insufferable. It’s not stuffed with melodies the way her early work was; it’s annoying and grating. Beating the listener over the head with its three hooks for three minutes and 37 seconds that feel like a lifetime. None of that is the worst of it. Do you want to know what is? It’s a Dr Luke joint, which makes it not just a bad song, but a truly depressing one at that.
Something Corporate – ‘Punk Rock Princess’
You know it’s bad when a song title becomes the MySpace/MSN/Tumblr handle of the most insufferable person you ever met. There’s a handful of those out there, in fact, number six on this list would probably be Bowling For Soup’s ‘Girl All the Bad Guys Want’ for that very reason. However, this doesn’t just make the list for its cringeworthy title. It makes the list because, unlike every other song here, this one doesn’t do enough.
Yes, while every other song here is extra in a way that goes way beyond annoying, Something Corporate doesn’t try hard enough. Presumably, they’re going for a Blue Album-era Weezer style power-pop chug. The problem is they forget to add the hooks, charisma or charm that every song off that record has in spades. In its place, we have this insipid, boring stress-nightmare of a song. The band were probably going for a self-effacing joke when calling themselves ‘Something Corporate’. The truth is, they were bang on the money.
SR-71 – ‘Politically Incorrect’
Sweet baby James. If you thought that being an arsehole about how “everyone’s got so sensitive these days” was a modern phenomenon, you’re wrong. You probably also know it, but you wouldn’t have a personality if you admitted that. So you just press ahead, smugly saying “they wouldn’t make Blazing Saddles today” without realising that you’re quoting fifth-rate pop-punk bands from 25 years ago. What’s more, you’re even more wrong today than they were back then.
It’s true. SR-71, the long forgotten no-hopers behind perfectly decent pop-punk bop ‘Right Now’, found themselves with the same problem every band with a shock hit for a debut single has. What to do next? Well, Mitch Allan’s band came to the conclusion that their best choice for a follow-up hit was a smug, hookless dirge about how no one can stop him from speaking his mind. The music video gets interrupted with random audio samples from the Bush/Gore 2000 election campaign, and they’re the best parts of the song. Dire.
Simple Plan – ‘(Untitled)’
A few of you may baulk at this. Tellingly, it won’t be because of its quality. It’ll be because of the fact that this is in no way a pop-punk song. It’s a mid-tempo dirge with a synth orchestra thrown at it to drum up some needless drama and distract from how utterly hilarious everything about the song is. It just so happens to be a song written by one of the more famous pop-punk bands of the age. To that, I say, you may have a point.
However, I feel comfortable keeping this on the list. After all, this was a time when the genre was arguably at its mainstream peak. Everyone was looking for the next Green Day, especially after American Idiot broadened the landscape for what counted as pop-punk. You had The All-American Rejects try for a mainstream pop hit with ‘Gives You Hell’, Fall Out Boy managing to snag a Jay-Z guest appearance on Infinity on High, and well, this.
Simple Plan, a band that named their first two albums No Pads, No Helmets…Just Balls and Still Not Getting Any…, respectively, decided to go serious. Writing a song about how accidents caused by driving drunk can ruin lives far beyond those involved in the accident. An admirable cause, yet one whiffed so spectacularly by the band that it sounds more like naval-gazing self-pitying than anything made by the emo bands of the day.
“I’ve made my mistakes,” Pierre Bouvier whines on the nauseating chorus. Too fucking right he has.
