Read more: 10 criminally underrated blink-182 songs

Naturally, we asked our readers what the best pop-punk albums are of all time, and the answers were overwhelming. Find the top fan picks ranked below.

5. blink-182 – Take Off Your Pants and Jacket

Following up a blockbuster like Enema was no easy feat. On their fourth studio album, however, blink-182 accepted the challenge and focused on what worked. Their juvenile humor reigned — say the title out loud and then peek at the record’s joke tracks, like something about a dog — whereas the songs stayed fast and punchy. Think of all the classics (“First Date,” “The Rock Show”) that you still hear to this day, along with their more serious numbers like “Anthem Part Two” and “Stay Together for the Kids.”

4. New Found Glory – Sticks and Stones

New Found Glory’s 2002 breakthrough, Sticks and Stones, possessed an allure that made it ideal for summertime and shopping malls. Ever since its release, the record’s influence has run deep, from the Story So Far taking their name from one of the songs to massive anthems like “My Friends Over You” cracking the Billboard Hot 100. In fact, it’s hard to find a band who haven’t been touched by its chugging riffs and catchy choruses. Decades-old earworms like “Understatement” and “Head on Collision” even make their setlists to this day.

3. Avril Lavigne – The Best Damn Thing

Avril Lavigne’s third studio album, The Best Damn Thing, is one of her most beloved. Whereas her 2004 record, Under My Skin, sounded darker and heavier than her debut, this release embraced a more buoyant pop-rock slant that made it perfect for the radio. “Girlfriend” is a perennial anthem that was created on the fly, whereas belt-out-loud ballads like “Keep Holding On” highlighted her growth and songwriting chops. If you listen to her latest album, Love Sux, there’s definitely some shared DNA, but The Best Damn Thing will always come out on top.

2. Green Day – Dookie

Green Day recently caused mayhem when they played Dookie front to back at an intimate Vegas show ahead of their headlining slot at When We Were Young. Next year, they’ll celebrate 30 years of the beloved classic — the album that launched the Bay Area crew into the stratosphere and made them one of the biggest punk bands ever. It marked a divisive time, as purists called them “sellouts” and barred them from playing 924 Gilman St., while others saw their major-label debut as a sign of greater things to come. Whatever your stance, Dookie changed everything and helped to define the ’90s.

1. blink-182 – Enema of the State

Enema of the State is the album that flung many headlong into the world of pop punk. With producer Jerry Finn at the helm, blink-182 created a record that took them to great heights. New recruit Travis Barker added seriousness to their playing with his breakneck speed, which balanced out their crude humor and set them apart. The album also brimmed with tearjerkers (“Adam’s Song”), mega-hits (“All the Small Things”), and anxiety anthems (“Going Away to College”), which made Enema of the State the perfect brew of teenage angst. All these years later, it remains the gold standard of modern pop punk.

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And collide they did, and then some: from hip-hop legends to pop-punk royalty, audiences were constantly surprised as they stood in the crowd at each of the four stages throughout the weekend, watching Lil Wayne singing “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” with Good Charlotte, seeing Avril Lavigne crash the All Time Low set, and Steve Aoki collab with Yellowcard. Green Day kicked the entire weekend off with a Dookie album play, and in lockstep with blink-182, each announced a 2024 stadium tour and performed new music that had yet to be played live at the festival. Alongside the greats, exciting younger acts hit the desert too this year, artists who we’ve seen so astutely interpret this corner of alt music we’ve always loved in modern and insightful ways — from Jean Dawson to the Wrecks, EKKSTACY to KennyHoopla.

Though it’s easy to get emotional, no pun intended, that the weekend’s a wrap, we can at least revel in the gifts it gave us, and look forward to the year ahead, full of anniversary album plays, our favorite bands hitting the road, and new music — breadcrumbs that will satisfy that nostalgic itch we all have, at least until next October. 

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Set It Off

Even through the darkness, uncertainty and understandable fear, Gilbert knew that he needed to overcome the disease and wasn’t going to let it define him or take away his joy. Of course, Gilbert’s greatest joys lie within his family, including his loving wife and daughter, who was born just months before his cancer diagnosis. However, he also knew that he needed to turn to his greatest passion: music. With stunning bravery, Gilbert carried on with business as usual, albeit in a slightly different capacity, to begin the writing process for New Found Glory’s largely acoustic and most mature, vulnerable album yet, Make The Most Of it.

Read more: 10 incredible alternative albums that turn 10 in 2023

Gilbert had more than enough serious subject matter to pull from but was admittedly unsure if he wanted his cancer story to be front and center on the release. “There’s a thing that happens sometimes with charities and promotions that feel self-serving or cheap marketing, and I have always been delicate with other people’s emotions and not wanting to cross any boundaries,” Gilbert reflects over a Zoom call from his home in Tennessee. “A lot of good acts can be done for selfish reasons, and I [didn’t know] if I wanted to be the face of it.”

While Gilbert weighed opening up about his story, he went on tour shortly after, and it was on that same trek that he began to feel a shift in perspective. He realized that being a member of a beloved band could help raise awareness for this extremely rare cancer that’s often “misdiagnosed or undetected” long before it is too late for many patients. “What I have isn’t a normal cancer, and a lot of the deaths are [because] doctors don’t know what it is — I would [even] end up educating the nurses,” Gilbert explains. As he too nearly lost his life due to a series of misdiagnoses, sharing his experience was of the utmost importance, not only for himself but many others. “I would think about how rare this cancer is and how the odds of my wife getting in a car wreck visiting me are greater than catching this cancer I have. So, whenever I started thinking [writing] might be a waste of time or energy, I [soon] realized, ‘Why am I going to punish myself?’ and take away the joy I have writing songs and doing music?”

From there, the diagnosis of cancer “did the opposite” of slowing things down and instead pushed him to carry on with his life with an unstoppable fighting spirit. “Even in the hospital, the day after my second spinal surgery, I walked around,” Gilbert says with pride. His constant “drive to do whatever he can, even if it hurts,” amazed everyone around him, including his surgeons, and this energy has since remained his guiding principle throughout his journey to recovery. “We all truly don’t know how precious our time is, and we take advantage of that, so I want to enjoy everything at all times, as much as I can,” he says. Gilbert assures that even when he does eventually beat cancer, he will “feel the same way,” especially now with what he has gone through. “I’ve been given the gift to make it through, and [those] who were misdiagnosed never had that gift, so that’s why I want to do [this].”

When it came time for Gilbert to deliver the new songs to his longtime bandmates, they chose to put them together collaboratively in the same room. The four members sat in a circle with nothing more than their voices and a few acoustic guitars to capture the intimate nature of the tracks and reflect on their deeply personal subject matter. “When you’re sitting in a chair with an acoustic guitar, you’re talking and really connecting. Everyone’s ideas and opinions are able to be heard easier and quicker — it [also] made it easier since everyone had the lyrics in front of them to connect on it on a different level.”

With the seven new tracks that are featured on Make The Most Of It, Gilbert doesn’t shy away from revealing his most personal fears and resists sugarcoating the severity of his situation, offering a truly candid look into a person’s unique struggle with the disease. Among the many heartwrenching moments on the record, “Watch The Lillies Grow” is by far one of the most intense songs, with Gilbert making peace with his own mortality while reflecting on his life’s greatest accomplishments and the legacy he would leave behind if he did pass from the cancer. “I don’t listen [to the song],” Gilbert admits, “I had to listen to the mix to approve it, but could barely get through that.”

During his various stays in the hospital, Gilbert had to “sign things about his death,” meaning that if something were to go wrong, he would need to be prepared in many aspects. “Being hooked to machines” for weeks on end lead him to have a lot of time to process, which included his “biggest dream” of having a daughter. “There’s never really been a Gilbert girl in my family, so thinking that God forbid I didn’t make it through those surgeries, [at least] I could go away with my dreams coming to true — that’s the positive thing to look at.” Gilbert references heaven and his own personal faith on the track and shares how proud he is of his daughter and the “friendship” that they have formed already, all while remaining aware that for some people, they don’t always get to experience that feeling of pride in the first place.

Another moment of lyrical bravery and inspirational optimism is “Kiss The Floor,” a track where Gilbert says that cancer “brought out the best in him” and even taught him a few important lessons along the way that he now actively applies to his life. Gilbert realized that “knowing his fears” helped him use the situation for good. “It made me want to try to be more loving, patient and slower to anger,” Gilbert says with confidence. “A lot of the things that we stress about in life, and the time we spend fearful of our future is not even reality — it’s just what ifs.” Gilbert instead chooses to take advantage of what makes “life worth living” because even with challenges, Gilbert firmly believes “life can be better than you expect.”

Now, with Make The Most Of It on the horizon, Gilbert and New Found Glory have many reasons to celebrate, as the new record will officially come out on the legendary hardcore label Revelation Records. Gilbert says New Found Glory, who have always had strong ties to the hardcore community, actually sent their 1999 debut album, Nothing Gold Can Stay, to Revelation Records to put out. However, they passed, with Gilbert joking that even years later they still joke about not signing the band back in the day. “With this record, the content and where we are at, it seemed like [Revelation] was the right place to do this one-off album with.” With Make The Most Of It, Gilbert is hopeful that it will help expose the next generation to the bands they used to listen to on Revelation Records. “Hopefully [fans] will go back and buy a Texas Is The Reason, Youth Of Today or Gorilla Biscuits record — it’s a cool tradeoff,” he adds.

Following the release of the new record, New Found Glory will also hit the road this winter for a special run of intimate and unplugged shows surrounding the release — as well as dusting off select cuts from their vast discography in reimagined ways. “We always love promoting our new songs in the set, but we always [make sure] to play our classic songs to make the fans psyched,” Gilbert says. “With this tour, you are going to get a lot of the songs you have [always] wanted to hear that you don’t get at our normal shows.” He’s excited to report that the band’s dynamic will not simply be chairs on the stage, pledging that there will be “other instruments and growth” throughout the set. “We’re going to try to make this [tour] our own little musical — it’s going to be a completely different show,” he says.

While New Found Glory’s dedicated fanbase will surely be on the front lines to purchase the new record when it drops, they will also be happy to know that they aren’t only supporting a group of hardworking artists, but their very purchase will go a long way in the fight against the rare cancer that Gilbert has. Proceeds from the record will go to Pheoepara Alliance, an initiative that aims to provide support for clinical research, awareness and the continued well-being of patients battling the disease — the latter of which has been a major help in Gilbert’s personal experience.

“I’ve been gifted this career, and I feel so lucky. Now that we still have those same fans after 25 years, I need to give back as much as I can,” Gilbert adds. Make The Most Of It is arguably the most important record of New Found Glory’s career thus far, and while it’s an acoustic album, it is most certainly their heaviest album to date emotionally. Even in the absence of crushing guitars and pounding drums, Gilbert and co. sound as raw as ever and have redefined the meaning of artistic transparency and vulnerability.

The Blackpool pop-punk outfit’s follow-up to last year’s expansive Desperate Times, Desperate Pleasures EP is the first part of a planned double album that exists in a twilight world of anxiety and rumination, stemming from Cox’s experiences during the pandemic. Boston Manor released their third album, GLUE, in the spring of 2020, with touring very much off the table and Cox’s routine broken into irreconcilable pieces for the foreseeable future. His wife, a key worker, continued her job. Left to its own devices, his mind filled the yawning space with a litany of intrusive thoughts and fears. 

Read more: Paramore dive into the horror of doomscrolling with new single “The News”

“It’s definitely an internal darkness,” he says. “There’s a lot of stuff that came to light in the last 18 months, about me personally, that I really hadn’t dealt with very well. Not from the pandemic — I think that was just me starting to recognize that I needed to change some things. The record’s really about that internal deep dive and realizing that I’m not actually all right, and that I need to do a lot of work on myself. 

Cox admits that Boston Manor “play in this shadow world anyway, thematically and aesthetically. It’s this little playground that we’ve built for ourselves.” A double album gave them more space to explore the depths of their creativity. “As I was going to therapy and working through stuff, I realized that I am coming out of this. There’s going to be a happy ending, hopefully, and a conceptual trajectory that runs through both records in that sense.”

In the annals of punk concept records, Datura is more mood piece than American Idiot-style rock opera. Rather than finding narrative pegs to hang the songs from, Cox and his bandmates — guitarists Mike Cunniff and Ash Wilson, bassist Dan Cunniff and drummer Jordan Pugh — are interested in maintaining a heavy, deliberate sense of atmosphere. Chiaroscuro has made plenty of pointless, dangerous gambits seem alluring over the years, and here you might pick out a figure lit by the harsh glare of a phone screen, a bottle they didn’t need to open by their side. 

“There was a lot of pressure to use this time productively, but people were having myriad issues, whether that’s loneliness, depression or having to work through the pandemic,” Cox says. “I’m definitely one to beat myself up. I’m quite hard on myself. It’s that frustration of making the same mistake over and over again, and recognizing that you are making a mistake, and then still doing the same thing again.”

Musically, developing Datura’s sense of scope comes down to pacing and stylistic ambiguity. The record is laced with synth-heavy interludes, borrowing a world-building tactic that has long been a core tenet of hip-hop albums, and sequenced to break open and then fade into nothingness with the shape-shifting indie rock of the closer, “Inertia.” Similar heavy lifting must be done lyrically, with the deployment of stark, vivid imagery that has a complex truth at its heart and time to seep beneath the skin.

“I suppose, in a way, it’s a safety net — it distances you; it gives you that little barrier between yourself and the art,” Cox says of the concept-album umbrella. “I’m quite a shy person. I’m not very good at being vulnerable with lyrics. I’ve always written a little bit cryptically, and I think that’s just because I’m scared. But I think with this, I tried to get it as close and as open as possible while toeing that line of the artistic liberties you take with making a concept record.”

Cox’s writing is perhaps his most nuanced and dynamic to date. He presents thoughts that are fully formed enough to stick but leaves question marks hanging in the air for the listener to invest something of themselves into the experience. “These fucking problems keep following me/Maybe I’m the problem, maybe it’s me,” he sings on the anthemic “Foxglove.” It’s a lacerating conclusion to arrive at, but it also sounds like almost everyone you know. 

“I don’t know about you, but I’ve never really connected with anything that was so literal, and so specific to that one person, that you’re more of a fly on the wall to that particular experience,” Cox says. “If you’re going through something and you can attribute your own experiences to what you’re hearing, you connect with the record on a much deeper level.”

Datura pairs this desire to communicate with the sort of musical blunt force that gets the job done in a whole other way. This is a crushing, heavy pop-punk record that mainlines cavernous drums and molasses-thick guitars. Recorded in Brixton, south London, with returning producer Larry Hibbitt — no stranger to this sort of blend as the former guitarist of acclaimed U.K. post-hardcore band Hundred Reasons — it is obvious that the concept bells and whistles haven’t overpowered the band’s straightforward desire to make music that will ignite when a crowd gets hold of it. 

“I think that’s always the fine line that we walk: the subtle bits versus the bombastic rock middle eights and big choruses,” Cox says. “We also consider our live experience as a big part of it, sometimes to our detriment. Sometimes we can’t go too far into weird Radiohead world because we think about how that’s going to translate for our audience and for our abilities as performers live.”

Datura’s unwritten second chapter is the wildcard in all this. Thematically, the whole endeavor doesn’t work for Cox if the promise of light breaking through the darkness isn’t there at the end of these seven soul-searching tracks. But, also, it places pressure on part one to chime with people in a way that makes part two something that’s anticipated rather than tolerated or endured. When a dawn chorus fades in during the record’s closing seconds, promising a new day, that’s Boston Manor rolling the dice.

“If, theoretically, this is panned by the fanbase, then they’re probably not going to be rushing out to buy part two,” Cox admits. “But it’s the risk that you take as an artist. I hate that arrogant musician sound bite where they’re like, ‘This is the most insert adjective here record we’ve ever made,’ but it does excite me that we’re still taking risks.”

When We Were Young Festival 2022

Gallery Credit: Jawn Rocha and Deadly Doodles

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Hayley Williams of Paramore

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When We Were Young Festival 2022

When I started calling myself a poet in college, I was first inspired by Modern Baseball, not O’Hara or Kenneth Koch or Sylvia Plath or anyone you’d find on the syllabus of an entry-level English course. It was listening to their debut album Sports where I learned how to conjure an image out of words that don’t belong together. Take “Re-Do” for one: “Maybe I could just move away or go extinct like triceratops/But I love loving, watching movies, sitting back and also breathing.” Sports is poetic, with its lines about using the brightness of teeth as a lantern, the linguistic curiosity within the word “reckon,” poor grammar in Facebook statuses and cellphone contacts pillaged like vast landscapes.

Read more: What does emo really mean? The story of the genre in 11 songs

After playing some acoustic shows together, graduating high school and moving to Philadelphia, Ewald and Lukens met the ska-loving bassist and producer Ian Farmer and made their first record in Drexel University’s recording studio. On Nov. 27, 2012, Sports landed in the laps of a budding fanbase cultivated through DIY shows around the city. At 12 songs and 31 minutes on the dot, the three Philadelphians changed emo rock in Pennsylvania forever. They weren’t as heavy as their counterparts in the city, like the Wonder Years, the Menzingers, Everyone Everywhere and Hop Along, but they had the same passion and intensity for the DIY community, and hoped to discover their own potential within a flourishing region. 

Ewald’s Instagram account was truly a time capsule of that time, with many of his posts documenting those early shows in low-resolution with relic photo filters. It feels like a lifetime ago, when Modern Baseball had not yet blown up on social media with their seminal 2014 record, You’re Gonna Miss It All. Everything seemed simpler then, when acoustic emo bands were getting popular on apps like Tumblr, where accounts would paste their lyrics in cursive font over stock photography. 

Romance, wasted time, friendship and goofball semantics — this was the promised landscape of Modern Baseball from the get-go. What more could you expect, or need, from two kids barely out of high school? At the time Sports properly entered my orbit, I was the same age Ewald and Lukens were when they wrote it. Four years after its release, every story on the tracklist kept similar levels of urgency. But by then they’d put out more records and left Sports in their own bygone era  — which is a testament to the emo genre, where everything stumbles over itself.

If you were a teenager in the early 2010s, you most likely participated in sacred rituals of Tumblr, when thousands of emo lyrics were pasted atop stock photography and shared in droves. Reblogging those posts, that’s how I, and so many other rural kids, discovered music that lived beyond the margins of the top-40 zeitgeist. It was as if each emotion I ever felt was universally defined by some lyric to a song that someone else had already claimed as their own. I didn’t grow up with siblings, so I’m not familiar with the architecture of close-proximity lineage or the cherished gesture of passing an interest down to a brother or sister. So it was the endless utopia of social media, in the years when it hadn’t yet consumed our lives completely, that put new, exciting work into my own sightline.

Before my best friend Jessi and I became close, we sporadically reblogged each other on Tumblr. It was her page that often shoehorned me into another dimension, one full of American Football, the Wonder Years, the Front Bottoms and, of course, Modern Baseball. It was far from my own microcosm, one full of Nirvana, Drake and the Beatles. We went to the same high school, though we didn’t talk in person until after she graduated in 2015, when I was about to go into my senior year. With three other people, we formed an inseparable friend group and spent most of our time together in the summer of 2015, parading Burger Kings, basements and the local mall’s Hot Topic. 

If you are a Modern Baseball fan like me, I’m sure you remember where you were when the band made that heartbreaking post on Instagram. I was in my college’s dining hall, doom-scrolling before another class. The band were preparing to maneuver across the country on a spring tour with Kevin Devine and the Goddamn Band, Sorority Noise and the Obsessives to mark the first birthday of their third LP, Holy Ghost. First, Lukens came to social media to announce they wouldn’t be touring with the band because of their mental health. Then, nearly a month later, Ewald announced their hiatus, notably spurred by everyone in the band feeling like the project had become more a source of anxiety than friendship. 

Jessi and I, in particular, bonded over Modern Baseball. Holy Ghost was our record of the summer in 2016. When she went to college in Akron the fall prior, the friend group unsurprisingly went on the backburner, save for our group chat. By the time I’d gotten to college that fall, I found new people in my dorm and began purposefully flaking on my hangouts with old friends. We were in different parts of Ohio at the time: Akron, Hiram, Southington, Ashland. The smallest inconveniences and jokes were leaving fissures in our conversations. I was to blame for a lot of the fallout, because I believed I was irreplaceable, that I could blow off our plans and never lose them. 

The final straw came when the rest of them were together and kept calling me, daring to show up at my dorm. I was with my shiny new college friends and wanted no part of it, so I freaked out and told them to stay away. They, rightfully, kicked me out of the group chat, and we didn’t talk for months. When I apologized, they did welcome me back, albeit hesitantly, into their lives. But things were never the same. None of them came to my grandmother’s calling hours, and group chat messages went unanswered for days at a time. We did our annual Christmas gift exchange over winter break, but the small, cheap gifts reflected the emotional turbulence in the air. We’d never be the same, and I’d continue tumbling further into the social economy of college’s unrelenting food chain and leaving my old life behind.

Sports was utopic for a kid like me, as Modern Baseball toed the line between self-reflective and self-obsessed. The songs are accessible, especially in how you can both live within them and consider them through retrospect. Maybe you are not in a place of heartbreak anymore, but surely you remember what it was once like to be, and that is why there is immense emotional wealth in the wordplay of Lukens and Ewald. When Lukens sings “You stole my heart like I stole your hometown lingo” in “Re-Done,” or when Ewald sings “Eight hours on the top of a bus/Just to find out in the end/I will never stop falling in love” in “Coals,” you can touch the hope, and you can reach far back into your own percussion and find the beats of a beautiful youth. 

At 24, I’ve finally made it to a place where I can accurately assess how bad of a person I was seven years ago. Most emo records don’t speak to the reckonings of adulthood, but Sports does. When you outgrow the overstimulation of spending uneventful hours getting stoned in dorm rooms you’ll never see again, the ash settles, and you can see your wrongs. Sports, amid the laments of fallen relationships and college debauchery, is a record about the friendships that outlast the breakups. When the final strums of “Coals” cease their melancholic vibrations, all that’s left are Ewald and Lukens, presiding over their grief together.

So when Modern Baseball announced the spring 2017 tour the next month, just as starting the band forever kept Ewald and Luken’s friendship in the same binary 10 years ago, my companionship with Jessi clicked back into place. We planned on going to the Columbus show together; we had a future to look forward to, even if the course of our lives that would unspool afterward was full of uncertainty. When the tour was canceled, our friendship turned a corner, and, miraculously, we became closer than ever. To this day, I never got to see Modern Baseball play live, but I think I prefer it that way.

After Sports started getting attention in late 2012, Ewald, Farmer and Lukens played shows in support. They’d never done anything beyond low-key sets in friends’ basements, and, since Ewald had recorded all of the drum parts himself, they needed a drummer. They tapped local Sean Huber to play percussion with them, and, before even turning 21 years old, the band embarked on their first American tour, doing DIY gigs in basements, VFW halls and bars across the country. 

Lukens and Ewald were each other’s great equalizer: Lukens had this nasally tenor and played their guitar a bit sporadically, while Ewald had a monotone, balanced vocal delivery and a patient poise in the way he performed. They traded vocals on songs like “Tears Over Bears,” “Hours Outside in the Snow” and “@Chl03k,” and perfected a unique versatility that was untapped in the emo DIY scenes they cherished so endlessly. They wrote a lot of songs about being young and going through various romances, which weren’t necessarily themes that emo and pop punk were lacking. What made them so different, though, was how genuine they all were.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with Georgia Maq and Kelly-Dawn from Camp Cope, the Australian punk trio that opened for Modern Baseball in Sydney in January 2017 mere days before the announcement of their hiatus. I couldn’t help but ask them about their time spent with the Philadelphians, because the music of Modern Baseball had meant, and still means, so much to me. They humored my interests by gushing about the small acts of kindness Ewald, Lukens, Farmer and Huber showed them while on tour. Most palpably, when some of the venues they played at weren’t paying them fairly for their opening sets, Modern Baseball gave them part of their own take so they could afford to buy food and keep doing shows together. 

Modern Baseball wrote a lot about girls, but not in ways that fed into the disenfranchisement of young women in emo culture. The genre’s problematic, male-dominated apex was reached long before the #MeToo movement found the spotlight, around the time Sports and You’re Gonna Miss It All came out, which meant the stories of women being groped in mosh pits or groomed by predatory band members were often hushed by the industry. Modern Baseball approached it differently, though, by caring for the people buying tickets to their shows, whether it was through pausing shows to do wellness checks or cultivating inclusive environments around their music. 

In early January 2017, Lukens, Ewald, Farmer and Huber took the stage at the Metro Theatre in Sydney. While tumbling through a rendition of “The Weekend,” Lukens laughed through their line deliveries while Farmer and Ewald danced with each other across the stage. The four of them were having so much fun, as the crowd moshed themselves into a catharsis draped in red stage lights. One month later, the band would cancel their upcoming tours. Nine months after that, Modern Baseball would be gone.

After you’ve spent any chunk of your life with one specific group of people, you can never fully let go of them. I imagine Bren, Jake, Ian and Sean feel similarly, wherever they are. An old friend texts me and I leave him on read, uneager to rekindle any sort of bromance in fear that we’ll never get back to what we once were. But when he says “I love you,” the familiarity is all the same, and, within that, there is this long, enduring hope that someday, somewhere, we will reconvene. 

Sports came out in 2012, when I hadn’t yet learned what it meant to fall in love with someone for the sake of knowing them forever. I think back on the years when my friends and I were inseparable, and I can’t tell if I miss that part of my life or not. I don’t speak to most of them anymore, and there doesn’t seem to be a world where Modern Baseball play music together again. Yet I can still smell the basement we used to hang out in, just like I can still hear Bren Lukens singing “The Weekend” at a now-closed record store in Lakewood. “Though the white jacket didn’t fit/The friends I came with did, perfectly,” they sang, as a Northeast Ohio dusk came to rest above Madison Avenue outside. It was poetry. Four years later, I log into Apple Music and see that Jessi is listening to Sports, and I remember why we stuck it out. 

Yves Tumor reinvents pop music made for graveyards

Whether they’re making splintering noise or projecting classic rock through a new lens, Yves Tumor creates spellbinding music with a sinister edge. Now, they return with their first new music of the year, “God Is a Circle.” The single is a rather ghoulish affair, beginning with a shriek right out of a Wes Craven movie. A relentless panting anchors the song as Tumor describes a relationship that’s consuming too much of them. The result is equal parts supernatural, foreboding and deeply replayable from an artist who’s ever-evolving. —Neville Hardman

Magnolia Park aren’t just another “Radio Reject”

Magnolia Park are back with another raucous anthem, “Radio Reject.” The track brims with energy and sweat, highlighting the band’s bright fusion of pop-punk with alt-rock and trap leanings. Magnolia Park call the song an “anthem for following your dreams and never giving up,” and you can see for yourself by listening below. “Radio Reject” appears on their debut album, Baku’s Revenge, out now. —Neville Hardman

Softcult’s “Drain” is a timely shoegaze directive in the fight against climate change

With their latest single “Drain,” shoegaze/dream-pop duo Softcult offer a timely plea for the world to take climate change seriously while critiquing old-world policies that put profit over people and the planet. Vocalist and guitarist Mercedes Arn-Horn, along with twin sibling and drummer Phoenix Arn-Horn, trade off hypnotizing melodies and harmonies set to a backdrop of fuzzed-out guitars and ambient reverb. The track is just another example of Softcult’s lyrical bravery in the face of injustice and will appear on their upcoming EP, see you in the dark, out this spring. —Alessandro DeCaro

Victoria Anthony’s “Should’ve Known” is a pop-punk breakup anthem

With her latest single “Should’ve Known,” Victoria Anthony gives listeners an inside look into a troubling breakup while turning her pain into an unapologetic pop-punk anthem. Set against a backdrop of driving drums, 808s and catchy guitar riffs, Anthony sums up her feelings of resentment toward her ex-partner with confidence and vulnerability. While she’s open about the pain that she experienced in a way that most can relate to, the song takes on another life as well. It positions Anthony in a place where she can have the upper hand and come out of the situation stronger than ever. —Alessandro DeCaro

Light up with YUNGMORPHEUS’ “Figure-Four Leg Lock”

YUNGMORPHEUS doesn’t need to shout to grab your attention. Rather, the Los Angeles MC employs a gentler touch through cool-headed, stream-of-consciousness rapping and buoyant, jazzy production. With “Figure-Four Leg Lock,” YUNGMORPHEUS’ verses unfurl like ribbons of chronic smoke. Through it all, he commands the track with an ease that makes his grave observations (“Pigs probably clap a brother just for a promotion”) all the more compelling. —Neville Hardman

The HIRS Collective and Shirley Manson (Garbage) create stellar powerviolence with “We’re Still Here” 

On the HIRS Collective’s latest single “We’re Still Here,” they’ve enlisted beloved ’90s alternative-rock vocalist Shirley Manson (Garbage) to create yet another anthem that embodies their mission to make the world a safer and more just place for trans and queer individuals. With pummeling blast beats, motivational lyrics, melodic vocals from Manson and earth-shattering breakdowns, the powerviolence-meets-grindcore band are unmatched in terms of energy and aggression. The single follows the announcement of the collective’s upcoming LP, We’re Still Here, arriving March 24, which features a host of high-profile guest vocalists such as Frank Iero (My Chemical Romance), Geoff Rickly (Thursday) and Damon Abraham (Fucked Up), among many others. —Alessandro DeCaro

Ryan Oakes and Loveless’ “HEAVYWEIGHT” is a confident blast of rock 

Rapper-singer Ryan Oakes is continuing his foray into rock ‘n’ roll-inspired music once again with his latest single, “HEAVYWEIGHT.” The track channels the familiarity of early 2000s rap-rock and pushes it further into the future with a massive chorus courtesy of LA duo Loveless, who supply anthemic vocals, heavy guitars and intense rhythmic energy. Oakes wastes no time spitting rapid-fire lyrics that document his rise to fame while taking shots at those who doubted him along the way with a healthy dose of braggadocio. —Alessandro DeCaro

Meg Myers conjures a rallying cry with “SOPHIA <144>” 

Meg Myers is calling for unity with her new single “SOPHIA <144>” featuring Nicole Perretti. At just over a minute long, its accompanying visual is a concise rallying cry that acts as a “call of remembrance,” Myers says. The video is interpolated with news footage of Iranian women demanding for change after recent killings of those who refused to wear a hijab. Listen to the full track here. —Neville Hardman

Fleshwater’s “Closet” is ’90s post-hardcore at its finest

On “Closet,” the second track from Fleshwater’s debut LP, We’re Not Here to Be Loved, the Massachusetts-based post-hardcore/shoegaze collective have captured the spirit of the ‘90s in haunting ways. “Closet” feels like a hybrid between ‘90s space-rock pioneers Hum and the melodic and rhythmic sensibilities of Deftones. Fleshwater, who are composed primarily of members of hardcore act Vein.fm — along with singer-songwriter Mirsy, blend delicate vocals with harsh screams and frantic time signatures to create an unsettlingly beautiful score. —Alessandro DeCaro

Much of Dobson’s appeal is pop-punk nostalgia. She counts Selena Gomez, Jordin Sparks and Miley Cyrus among her publishing credits, each of them borrowing from her style to create theirs. Dobson, of course, was one of the few Black artists who epitomized the sound and feel of the pop-punk genre, with her 2003 self-titled debut rising to the top of the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart in Canada. 

[Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / BELT: UNCUFFED, SWEATER: RYAN LI, PANTS: AMINA MUADDI AVAILABLE AT HUDSON’S BAY]

Basically, there can be no pop-punk revival without Dobson, yet she still occupies a blind spot in the collective reimagining of the genre. She came after Avril Lavigne, another Canadian pop-punk princess, but right before many of the mainstays of the movement like Panic! At The Disco. As one of the only Black women, she was relegated to the sidelines — an afterthought for gatekeepers and consumers alike. But for young Black women, she was — like the second single from her debut album — “everything.” Willow Smith, whom Dobson has in many ways passed the torch to and considers “culturally important,” even cites her as one of her direct influences. 

IN OCTOBER, OVER ZOOM from her family home in Nashville, Dobson explains that the way she was whisked away after her set in Canada must have made it appear like she delusionally believed she was Beyoncé-level famous, but the deeply 2000s singer-songwriter’s hurried exit was for more practical reasons: She was late for a flight due to the concert’s delayed start, and her handlers knew she’d never get where she needed to go next without obscuring her fans from her line of sight. If left to her own devices, she would have stopped to take photographs she didn’t have time to take or jumped over the barricade, soaking in her fans’ energy — energy she’s had such limited access to over the pandemic. 

[Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / HAT: FEFE’S OWN, JACKET: HOUSE OF ETIQUETTE]

Speaking of energy, Dobson is teeming with it, but in true rock star fashion is equally sleepy and effervescent. The musician, now 37, is clearly excited about the next chapter of her story; it has, after all, been over a decade since the release of her 2010 album Joy. Currently, she is riding the high of the release of her most recent singles “FCKN IN LOVE” and “Recharge My Heart.” (The “give me your energy” refrain of the latter song feels appropriate to highlight here.)

Since the release of her debut single “Bye Bye Boyfriend” in 2003 — an angsty, guitar-driven farewell song for a less-than-ideal lover — her confessional vibe has remained. “Honestly, I always try to explain my heart in most of my albums, and it’s hard to do that at times because you don’t wanna hurt anybody. But I feel it’s my time to tell my story,” she confesses. “I’m not bending to radio or streaming, but instead just focusing on rock ‘n’ roll and honest music.”

Dobson considers Nashville, Tennessee — one of the rock capitals of the United States — where she lives with her Peletons, record collection and her partner, the rapper Yelawolf, her adopted home. Even though her story began in her birthplace of Scarborough, Canada, today, Dobson seems as American as she is Canadian. But geographical and cultural differences are of little significance to the singer who is of Jamaican and European descent. 

[Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / NECKLACE: ETAH LOVE, RINGS: ETAH LOVE, SWEATER: KILLSTAR, JEANS: FEFE’S OWN]

In Canada, ethnicities coalesce more seamlessly. In America, however, segregation still thrives, with Black having a more limited definition: descendants of Africans brought here as slaves. In an interview with The Village Voice back in 2011, Drake — a huge Dobson fan, and arguably the biggest global superstar — put it like this: “Canada’s like a cultural melting pot, especially Toronto. America, I come here sometimes, and I witness real segregation. Like when you go to LA and it’s like, ‘This area’s Mexican, and this area’s white.’ That’s crazy to me because in Toronto we have cultural areas — ‘OK, this is Little India, this is Chinatown, this is where the Greek people are’ — but it’s not segregated. It’s not like you can’t go there and participate in the culture. So it’s a bit different. I think Canada’s very accepting.” 

Fittingly, Dobson recently reunited with Drake and Lavigne, after a sequence of serendipitous events. 

“It started with my manager [Danny Reiner] and I going to a Lady Gaga concert in Toronto. My manager also works with Nelly Furtado, so we were all in a box watching the show. We went to another box to visit some friends, and Avril was there. I hadn’t seen her in years! We got right into catching up, and before we knew it, the concert was over. The night was young, so I took Avril and our crew out for some drinks to one of my favorite spots in Toronto, and then Drake hit us up about an OVO afterparty.”

Upon arriving at the party, Dobson gave Drake, whom she hadn’t seen in ages, a big, warm hug. And then, a photo of the three — Drake, Dobson and Lavigne — was snapped. Drake shared their group photo to his Instagram, and the rest is internet history.

[Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / JACKET: KILLSTAR, T-SHIRT: ELLIE MAE VINTAGE, RINGS: ETAH LOVE, PANTS: FEFE’S OWN]

No matter where she is, Dobson intimately understands that people make a place great, so she has always tried to surround herself with great people — like Reiner, Drake, Lavigne. This is how she continues to vibrate high, leaving little room for others’ doubts — even her own — to creep into her life.

Her stance is philosophical: “It’s only when doubt gets involved that it prevents that manifestation from happening as quickly as you’d like it to. The problem is as humans, we doubt: It’s natural. We’re instilled with fear the minute we are born, really. Doubt is so natural, and it prevents manifestation [from working] as fast as we want. [It] still happens, just takes a little longer.”

According to her best friend Anastasia Gordon, Dobson has manifested her entire life. 

“One of the first conversations I ended up having with her, I introduced myself like, ‘I’m Stacey, nice to meet you.’ And someone said, ‘Fe said she’s gonna go on tour with Justin Timberlake. She’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m gonna do it.’ It’s not like anything had happened yet, but I later found out she was manifesting her destiny,” Gordon says over the phone. “I think that was my first encounter with the power of manifestation because fast-forward a year-and-a-half later, she was getting ready to go on tour with Justin Timberlake.”  

[Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / JACKET: KILLSTAR, T-SHIRT: ELLIE MAE VINTAGE, RINGS: ETAH LOVE, PANTS: FEFE’S OWN]

Gordon, who met Dobson in high school, also remembers her as a nonconformist: the daughter of a single mother finding her own way to do everything — whether music or fashion — often out of survival. Dobson’s early life was so under-resourced, with her mother struggling to provide adequately for her and her brothers, and her father simply not being in the picture. She wasn’t like other kids: She was scrappy and resourceful, relying on both her mother’s closet and thrift stores like Value Village. 

Dobson’s unique clothing choices highlighted a lack, of course, but also a wound. 

“She showed up to high school one day and was wearing a wedding gown. Everything that is cool now, she was rocking then. She was literally rocking her uncle’s clothes because her parents, her mom, didn’t have the funds to get clothes,” Gordon recalls. Dobson’s exterior was a distraction for others. “The reality was there were some very hard and painful things that were going on internally, and music was her way,” Gordon adds.

There was nothing else Dobson could do. “The clothes that I wore were a reflection of how I felt, and although we didn’t have much money, my mom had a lot of clothes that are classified as vintage,” the singer explains.

[Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / JACKET: KILLSTAR, T-SHIRT: ELLIE MAE VINTAGE, RINGS: ETAH LOVE, PANTS: FEFE’S OWN]

In addition to providing her with old clothes, Dobson’s mother influenced her love of music. 

“My mom played so much music in the household every single day, and she played it loud. You could not get away from it if you tried,” she laughs. That included Bob Marley, Depeche Mode and Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. “[She] definitely pushed [and] encouraged me to sing,” she adds.

Up until recently, Dobson and her Jamaican father were estranged. Dobson finds it difficult to say she missed something she had never known. Therefore, her father’s absence never felt like a phantom limb but rather like someone that had been misplaced. That’s why she can’t say she was “abandoned,” either. 

But where did her father go? In her youth, she didn’t know the answer, but everyone else could see him etched on her face. That’s the toll of being “other” — it’s written all over one’s face, especially if you’re a biracial Black girl who grew up visibly different from her contemporaries. 

“I’m just thankful that I can have that other part of me more in my life,” Dobson says of her dad. “That’s very important to me.”

[Photo by Jimmy Fontaine / JACKET: FEFE’S OWN, NECKLACES AND RINGS: ETAH LOVE, TANK TOP: FEFE’S OWN]

She’s chosen forgiveness, above all else, just as she’s chosen to live a doubt-free life. Her father, once ill-equipped to be one, is willing to play his role today, so she wants to meet him where he’s at — where she’s at. For Dobson, greatness is measured in one’s constant striving in the present. She’s never going to stop striving, so she’s not going to put any limitations on others’ efforts for growth. 

The work never stops for Dobson: “I give myself more goals, strive harder.”

And she has: Since those harrowing high school days, Dobson has gone on to leave an indelible mark in the music industry, whether or not she was in the public eye.

Lately, those goals are piling up. For Dobson, a new album is on the horizon. She’s headed to Toronto next week to cut the final vocals and finish the LP. Dobson says her next project will be a combination of all of her previous albums, albeit the best parts. 

“It will be rock-driven but with some pop melodies and always pulled together with my lyrics from the heart,” she explains. “I’m really digging into rock at the moment. My first two singles were very pop-driven, but the album will have that rock edge I love.”

All of that perseverance has paid off: She’s ready to give us her “everything” once again. 

Along with their first single, the band have also announced that their debut album, Creatrix, will drop March 17. Chiefly, Now More Than Ever have made it clear that they’re on a mission to uphold the pillars of pop and rock.

Read more: These 20 songs will make you nostalgic for the 2000s

The trio comprises Ritter, Scott Chesak (All-American Rejects, Weezer) and Izzy Fontaine (Taking Back Sunday, Tegan And Sara). A preview of what’s to come, their debut track explodes with lively energy and sounds like a true homage to pop punk with an infectious, upbeat hook. Lyrically, Ritter sings of being enamored with the girl who “smokes her cigarettes like Joan Jett” while mulling over ways to approach her.

In the far-out visual, the band are floating in space in the year 2137. While they’re asleep at first, a buzzing alarm can be heard that wakes them up, summoning them to their expedition — an analogy fitting for Now More Than Ever. “We were all artistically on autopilot or sleeping, and the music woke us up,” Ritter explains in a press release. “Together with Jon Danovic, we got to create a visual representation of this awakening that embodies what music is to us: freedom, joy and adventure.”

Listen to “Don’t Rush, Don’t Wait” below.