This genre had more originality from around 1997-2001 - that was its heyday IMO.

Even if it was all in a similar style, the songs were differentiable from each other. Bands like (old school) Green Day, Blink 182 and the Offspring made catchy songs with funny lyrics, just sung at a freight train pace. Maybe just a teeny bit of classic rock influence in there as well.

Then around 2002, it seemed to turn into this combination of emo and teen pop. Many of the bands and songs were total soundalikes, even to someone like me, who tends to pay close attention to things like that. They all have a similar pattern - a couple individual good songs ("Girl All the Bad Guys Want", "Stacy's Mom", etc) but albums with 17 or 18 "samey" tracks.

Question is, how long do you think it'll last for? I admit, it's kinda fun and humorous, and the bandmembers themselves seem like cool guys, but I think it already had its time in the sun. Yet it still basically refuses to die in late 2005. :o

As long as albums get sold it will continue....  ::)

^ Yeah, probably will. :(

I wonder though, if it'll be like hair metal, which (some) people were long getting tired of by the early 90's when grunge took over.

I admit, most of the songs and bands in that style from 1989-early '92 were a bit formulatic and uncreative - a far cry from Bon Jovi, Van Halen and Def Leppard, which were more the purveyors of the genre in the early-mid 80's.

Same thing is gonna happen with pop/punk, I'm sure of it. ;)

The state of pop-punk I would have said bad a couple of a years ago. Its weird though how Green Day and Weezer are popular again though. Green Day was popular from about 1994-1997. Weezer was popular in 1994 when they had hits like "Buddy Holly", Say It Ain't So", and "The Sweater Song". I remember PST(a sation out of Philly) used to play "Say It Ain't So" in 1995 often.

i dont have time to comment on this now, so Im bumping it for later...but I will say, you guys are confusing what poppunk is.

It's a state of fatigue!
::)

pop-punk developed in the late 70s when power-pop bands got slightly harder and started doing songs with punk attitudes.  CheapTrick, Big Star, New York Dolls, etc.  Bands like Buzzcocks and X Ray Spex probably show the best combination of the two genres together (listen to "What do I get?" and tell me that isnt the perfect even combination of pop and punk). New Wave in the 80s made pop-punk even stronger.  All New Wave was when it started was a poppier version of punk that could be successful.

People incorrectly call Green Day the starter of Pop-punk.  Green Day did nothing new (listen to late 70s band the Stiff Little Fingers and youll see what I mean). All Green Day did was revive the punk sound of the early 80s (the sound of the Jam, the minutemen, the Damned, The Replacments, etc).  They werent anymore poppier than those bands were.  Heres the thing though, in between 1977 and 1994, punk (or New Wave punk) became pop.  Bands didnt need to be really poppy for commerical audiences...and while bands that were doing that did still exist under the moniker of Power-pop(The Las, Weezer, Harvey Danger, New Radicals, Foo Fighters, etc), punk bands didnt need to amend themselves that drasticly to get noticed. Green Days first two underground albums, and their mainstream success Dookie, show this, as does hell, Blink 182s first album before they sold out and got crappy. 

The problem was, since these bands didnt need to get outragously poppier to get noticed, they had nothing to strive for.  The success of Dookie in 94 would have been the dreams of a band trying to get mainstream notice in the late 70s.  Many bands wanted more.  Blink sold out...started writing music that was calculated to be hits on the pop charts.  They spawned many many many crappy clone bands.  These bands then highjacked the name pop-punk...making a band like Green Day, a band which did have poppiness in it due to the fact that they mirrored 80s New Wave, look like Iggy and the Stooges. Pop-punk became less punk and more bubblegum pop with a fast, but poorly played guitar in the background.  This is where you get bands like Bowling For Soup and Sum 41. 

In the indie scene, real punk, power-pop and pop-punk lived on.  And recently, many bands from those scenes started making mainstream success.  Also at the same time, many of the faux 'pop-punk' bands like Sum 4 and Good Charlotte started to die off. (I highly doubt well ever see Good Charlotte again after that probe of Sony dioscovered the payola scandal that was getting them play on many radio stations).  In fact, the band that started all the clones, Blink 182, abandoned their false sound...THeir final album (before going on hiatus) was a step back to their roots and their influcences.  Songs like "I miss U" and "Down" were in the style of true pop-punkers like the Damned and The Undertones. 

The false Pop-punk is dead.  The real pop punk is back.  Celebrate and dont buy a Bowling For Soup album.     

^ Great points, Billy. As a pretty big overall music fan, that makes alot of sense to me.

I guess theoretically you could say New Wave was like "pop" pop/punk - it was derived from the same genre. I actually do like alot of those (current and former) bands you mentioned.

Maybe I should've been clearer in my initial post, though - "pop/punk" more refers to the Good Charlotte-ish bands of the last 3 to 5 years. Not that they're bad bands per se, just alot of the same.

It would be great, though, if it took a different turn in the next couple years. From the sounds of your post, I bet by 2008, those bands won't really be a draw on TRL, etc.