10 Greatest Pop Punk Bands Of All Time

It's hard to really pinpoint when pop punk actually came into existence. While the main resurgence of the genre started to happen around the turn of the century, the work of the Ramones had already flirted with the concept of pop songs with attitude as far back as the '70s. If there was one band who encapsulated everything great about the genre though, it would have to be Green Day.

Starting in the California underground, the music of Billie Joe Armstrong was indebted as much to acts like the Beatles and Cheap Trick as it was to the Clash and Operation Ivy. Taking that sense of melody into the punk world, albums like Dookie defined what the genre would be going forward, from the straight ahead power chords to songs about being bored and disillusioned with the teenage lifestyle. There's a little more to it than just suburban angst though.

Throughout their career, Green Day have managed to transform the genre to their every will on each record, from the folk punk of Warning to eventually going full operatic on albums like American Idiot. Granted, it hasn't all worked out well (after all, the trilogy exists), but every stumbling block these brats have come across has helped shape what pop punk would become since 1994. For as much as pop punk might seem like a product of its time, rarely do its bands hold up this well.