Following the ska-punk craze of the late 1990s, the genre seemed to fade away as quickly as it had emerged. Many bands had their brief moment in the spotlight before disbanding entirely, returning to the underground from which they came, or, in a few notable cases, attempting to adapt to the changing musical tastes of the fickle public. By the late 1990s and the early 2000s, pop-punk had become one of the mainstream’s music genres of choice, with bands like Blink-182, New Found Glory, and Sum 41 achieving major success during this time period.
It makes sense that some of the most popular ska-punk bands would lean more toward the aspect of their genre with more mainstream appeal, essentially producing singles that were pop-punk songs, rather than ska-punk songs. Save Ferris’ lead single from their sophomore album in 1999, “Mistaken,” was a hornless pop-punk song that sounded like it came from a different band than the one that released It Means Everything and Less Than Jake’s 2003 song, “She’s Gonna Break Soon,” had all of the horn parts removed for its release as a single.
Ska-Punk Goes Pop-Punk
Despite bands releasing songs that drifted away from the genre of ska-punk, many of them were still creating great music. Less Than Jake’s Anthem is possibly my favorite album by the band despite being much less…
