Who is popular today?

(Fueled by Ramen)The Florida trio have funny and relatable lines, so it’s a shame that their songs aren’t distinct enough to give them impactGen Z has spearheaded a resurgence in pop-punk – one of the many periodic moments in the sun the sub-genre has enjoyed since its late-70s birth, somewhere between the release of the first Ramones album and Pete Shelley becoming lead singer of Buzzcocks. You can hear it in the work of Willow Smith, Machine Gun Kelly and at least some of Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour, by some distance the biggest pop debut album of recent years.Meanwhile, the sound of Meet Me @ the Altar – a trio of Florida-based early twentysomethings described as “the saviours of pop-punk” by the New York Times, and the first band made up of women of colour to be signed by august emo label Fueled By Ramen – speaks loudly of childhoods spent watching Paramore and Fall Out Boy ascend to platinum sales. Their debut album, Past//Present//Future, features scratching effects on opener Say It (To My Face) and a tendency, during faster songs, to drop into half-speed tempos that carry nu-metal’s lumbering gait. The band clearly grew up during pop-punk’s early-00s Disneyfication, an era that saw Lindsay Lohan’s character in the 2003 remake of Freaky Friday front a band called Pink Slip. Meet Me @ the Altar picked John Fields as Past Present Future’s producer specifically because he’d worked with the Jonas Brothers, whose early albums stretched the definition of pop-punk to the point where “punk” became a very moot descriptor indeed. Continue reading...