10 Greatest Pop Punk Albums In Rock History

After years of the genre existing, the idea of pop punk still feels like an oxymoron at times. Punk was always about rebelling against the system and not having to cater to the kind of people who listen to pop radio. How are you supposed to be both at the same time? It's not an easy task...and yet these bands somehow made the whole thing look easy.

From its inception, bands have been finding new and interesting ways to turn the idea of pop punk on its head, whether it be through the aesthetic that they were using or how they decided to use the word punk. Some bands just so happened to be writing pop songs that had a bit of a punk edge, while others may have tried to write punk songs but ended up sounding so hooky that they managed to bridge the gap anyway.

Along the way, they also ended up inspiring many different bands to pick up guitars of their own, some of which even went on to plot their own course of rock stardom. Above all else, every single one of these records held up the one rule about all punk rock. It can be abrasive, loud, and more than a little bit offputting at first, but it can also be fun as all hell.

Once you started getting into the mid '00s, the pop punk explosion started to really come into its own. Apart from some of the skeptical fans who just threw everything into the emo category that sounded like this, there were still some quality bands that were willing to write songs with their hearts on their sleeve. It may have seemed like a party sometimes, but All American Rejects had some legitimate heart on Move Along.

Then again, if you were dyed in the wool for pop punk music, you would think that this is one of the more light weight versions of the genre to be released. What this album lacks in teeth though it makes up for with some of the best hooks of the genre, from the stuttered guitar breaks of the title track to the opener Dirty Little Secret, which is cemented in the brains of anyone who watched a teen comedy from the early '00s.

The strength of this record has to be in the deep cuts, with songs like Night Drive having a much more rock centric groove and Tyson Ritter really letting himself go on the song Stab My Back. This might not be the first record to tell you everything about pop punk, but this is the kind of thing that could get your pop-centered friends into the genre.