A very good question. If we’re going to be defending it, we ought to know what it is.

Well, simply put, it’s a mix of pop and punk. It can also be mixed with “emo,” as some of the more punk-leaning bands, such as My Chemical Romance, will occasionally be referred to as emo. Heck, there’s even an hybrid genre of emo pop which is like the strange child of emo and pop-punk, but that’s getting too far into the semantics of it all for me. And honestly, I tend to say emo rather than pop-punk most times, but “Emo Defense Squad” just doesn’t sound as good. But basically, if it happened in 2007 with far too much eyeliner and black hair dye, it’s probably pop-punk.

Green Day, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco,  blink-182, The All-American Rejects, Paramore, and Avril Levine are some of the most popular/well-known pop-punk artists. All Time Low, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Mayday Parade, A Day to Remember, Sleeping with Sirens, and Black Veil brides are some more niche ones, especially because the last two are generally classed as rock bands but have very emo tendencies.  As for newer groups, Halsey and Twenty-Øne Piløts are generally considered pop-punk, and some people (aka not me) will even include Five Seconds of Summer.

Many of the bands that are still relevant (as in, releasing new music) have changed their styles and are often classed as “alternative” or “rock.” So it’s very unlikely for a new artist to show up and be classed as pop-punk. And even if your style changed, you’ll still be considered a pop-punk band by your fans.

Take, for example the Emo Holy Trinity (or Original, if you believe in the second trinity): My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco. My Chemical Romance was more on the punk side of the spectrum, even though Danger Days drifted more towards pop most of the time; sadly, they are not a band anymore despite the 9/23/2016 hype, so they never really moved far enough to be classed out of the genre, even though one will often see them put down as rock. Panic! has never been stylistically consistent between (or even within) albums; they’ve always been mainly pop, but starting out as a blink-182 cover band and getting signed to Pete Wentz’s record label and later Fueled By Ramen (which, fun fact, is why they don’t have a Vevo channel for their music videos) puts them solidly in the territory. And Fall Out Boy has been pretty center, though they’ve drifted towards pop after their return from hiatus and even into rap with the Make America Psycho Again remix album of American Beauty/American Psycho.

So basically, it’s a very broad genre with a lot of artists and it’s often a sub genre and a bit hard to define, so if someone tries to fight you over who is and isn’t part of it, just say “I hate this town” before kick flipping away on your skateboard while eating a piece of pepperoni pizza in your ever-fashionable black skinny jeans.