Entertainment Every few years, punk goes pop (or vice versa). Artists and producers on both sides of the spectrum explain why the genres can’t get enough of each other When 5 Seconds of Summer were invited to join the nostalgia-heavy When We Were Young Festival in 2023, their immediate response was an eager yes. They likely would have ended up on the Las Vegas Festival Grounds even if they weren’t performing. The bill was an exhaustive list of nearly every band they loved and learned from while growing up in Sydney, Australia. 5SOS would be taking the stage after Yellowcard and preceding sets from Sum 41, Good Charlotte, and headliners Green Day. It was a no-brainer. But once their initial enthusiasm dissipated, they were slightly perplexed by the offer. “The question comes up of, like, ‘Do we fit?’” guitarist Michael Clifford tells Rolling Stone. “And, I mean, the answer was still no.” Glancing at the barricade, he could tell who was clearly there for the more veteran acts performing later that night, who first discovered 5SOS during the three years they spent touring with One Direction, and who came across “She Looks So Perfect” during one of its recurrent viral surges on TikTok. They couldn’t quite nail down their own classification: “Are we an alternative band? Are we pop stars? Are we rock musicians? Are we a boy band? Are we nostalgic?” Everyone there might answer those questions differently, depending on their own entry point into the intersection between pop and punk. The two genres perpetually orbit each other. Every few years, punk goes pop (or vice versa), by way of an unexpected crossover hit or comeback. Veteran acts shift their sound and break into a new era, or a younger generation will capitalize on the hunger for nostalgia. The waves rarely last longer than a few months in the mainstream, but the surge always returns. Territorial fans who didn’t want commercial pop audiences infiltrating their scene in the first place are never too thrilled about new listeners or the pop-leaning pivots from their rock gods. But others who may have once found the genre unfamiliar are introduced to the thrill of hearing a killer pop chorus filtered through riotous guitars and punk percussion. Clifford’s earliest pop-punk memories include playing Guitar Hero and watching Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker cover “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” on YouTube in 2007. That same year, Paramore released the disruptive LP Riot!, Fall Out Boy teamed up with Jay-Z and Babyface on Infinity of High, Avril Lavigne became The Best Damn Thing to hit pop in a while, and Boys Like Girls were making “The Great Escape.” Over the years, the route pop-punk could take to the mainstream was similarly altered by crossover hits from Machine Gun Kelly, Lil Peep, Halsey, Willow, and more. Each new surge showed straight-laced pop fans that there was always more happening on the outskirts of their favorite genre. “With songwriting, it’s interesting because the pop punk and emo genres [have] simple chord progressions, not a lot of parts, very clear concept, good emotional lyrics, really catchy melodies, are highly energetic — that’s essentially pop music,” says producer and songwriter Andrew Goldstein, whose collaborators have spanned from Blink-182 and Bring Me the Horizon to Addison Rae and Britney Spears. “Most pop music is three to four chords, a really catchy melody, and a concept that almost anyone can understand. That’s what really connects with people. Those similarities are what really allows for these artists to become a lot bigger.” Pop-punk first sunk its teeth into Goldstein at the turn of the millennium. He came across New Found Glory and Sum 41, as well as emo leaders Taking Back Sunday and Thursday, but it was Blink-182 that rewired him musically. Finding them right on the cusp of Enema of the State made him want to pick up a guitar and connect with an audience the way that his new favorite band did with him. “I remember my friend’s older brother was like, ‘Oh, they sold out,’” he says. “If somebody becomes popular, it’s easy to say that they’re selling out because there’s different steps you have to take to accommodate the fan base.” Playing bigger venues, mass ordering merchandise, recording in high-tech studios — all of that could be considered selling out. For pop fans, it’s unfathomable that anyone would want anything else. That was the case with 5SOS. “We always said from the beginning, we want to be as big as fucking possible,” Clifford says. Coming from Australia, they had to make their shot count. Before they’d released any music of their own, 5SOS shared A Day to Remember and Go Radio covers alongside renditions of One Direction and Justin Bieber tracks on YouTube. Green Day and Blink-182’s influence was impossible to ignore across their self-titled debut album, released in 2014, and the lasting impression of acts like Mayday Parade and All Time Low appeared clearly on its follow-up, Sounds Good Feels Good. But their sticky melodies and hooks always wore the touch of pop, too. “That style of music had taken such a downturn, and nobody was into it,” Clifford says of the pop-punk scene at the time. “We were like, ‘Well, hold on, we have a good idea where we can bring that back into the mainstream.’ And, yes, there are going to have to be some changes when you evolve to bring that style of music somewhere else.” 5SOS leaned into “the traits people were liking about boy band culture” since it was “all anyone would fucking talk about,” anyway; but they were still “longing for acceptance from a community that we were so passionately representing.” It came at a cost. “We were just shunned by the community instantly,” Clifford says. “They sort of just looked at how we looked and wrote it off.” If the genre wanted to thrive and survive, it couldn’t keep treating pop success like a death sentence. “Sometimes people are ahead of the curve, and it takes time for them to realize the brilliance of a record when it comes out,” says producer-songwriter John Feldmann,