From Blink-182 to to Wavves, which are the best punk-pop bands ever? Here's NME's run-down.
3. Blink-182
At the opposite end of the ‘sophisticated’ scale sit Blink-182, the puerile, filth-obsessed pop geniuses turned sensitive emo legends turned puerile pop geniuses getting nostalgic for all the filth. That a band famed in its early days for running naked through the streets and singing expletive filled tributes to their family might one day be considered pivotal pioneers of an entire generation of US punk guitar bands is a bit like Keith Lemon one day winning a Best Actor Oscar, but here we are – Blink are embedded as deep in the DNA of 21st Century punk-pop as they’d like to be in your mom.
2. Weezer
Emo godheads thanks to their blueprint-setting self-titled debut album and their emotionally visceral masterpiece ‘Pinkerton’, Weezer are commanders-in-chief of the brainiac surf wing of punk-pop – melodically unmatched in the genre and one of its most entertaining live acts, as anyone who saw Rivers Cuomo duetting with a blow-up doll at Reading 2010 will attest. A cult so huge they can hold their own cruises and (full disclosure) this writer once ran a monthly club night dedicated to them, Weezer are currently undergoing a critical renaissance with recent albums ‘Everything Will Be Alright In The End’ and ‘The White Album’. So, when punk pop’s Mount Rushmore is carved, Cuomo’s face will be dead centre, insisting nobody looks directly at it because it gets weirded out.
