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Sum 41: ‘Pop-punk was seen as paint-by-numbers nursery rhyme music. But there’s a lot of creativity’
The Canadian band have weathered shocking attacks, alcoholism, collapsing popularity and being papped with Paris Hilton – so why are they breaking up amid their genre’s resurgence?
They were still teenagers when they signed with Island Records, following the same path that catapulted Green Day and Blink-182 out of their local DIY scenes as A&R guys searched for the next poster kids for disaffection; All Killer No Filler’s songs were propagated everywhere from MTV and video game soundtracks to teen dramas and superhero blockbusters. And the speed of 21st-century youthquakes, from pop-punk to emo, grime, crunk and new rave in the space of a few years, threatened to outpace a band that achieved the “rockstar dream” – complete with trashing hotels on mushrooms and sharing stages with Judas Priest’s Rob Halford – with their first two albums. TikTok had become a breeding ground for a new generation of alternative music, When We Were Young festival was celebrating emo and pop-punk legends, and mainstream artists such as Olivia Rodrigo, Willow and Machine Gun Kelly were turning towards the style.
Or read this on The Guardian