Pop Punk and Emo Blew Up in 2005. This Year, It Came Back Swinging
SOURCE:Rolling Stone|BY:Maya Georgi
Gym Class Heroes, Motion City Soundtrack, and Cartel reflect on emo’s early-aughts takeover — and how they’re keeping that spirit alive 20 years later
I t’s summertime at Warped Tour and the crowd is roaring. Motion City Soundtrack’s Justin Pierre is pointing at a sea of people and directing their chants to the most memorable lines of “Everything Is Alright,” the band’s signature song from 2005. Dirt is everywhere, caking people’s Vans sneakers, and the day is a dull grey as clouds above threaten rain. But at that moment, none of it matters. All the audience wants to do is dig back into the recesses of their brains, recall the lyrics to a song they once loved, and scream them back at the band.
The year is 2025, and Motion City is worlds away from their breakout chapter, but playing those jagged chords feels distinctly similar to the pivotal year that was 2005. “Looking out and seeing that many people actually watching us, that was huge,” Pierre tells Rolling Stone.
This year, major acts who led the pop-punk and emo scene into the mainstream returned to their former pioneer glory: My Chemical Romance rocked stadiums across the country, Paramore’s Hayley Williams solidified her independence with a killer third solo LP, and Panic! At the Disco headlined When We Were Young — well, Brendon Urie did. Meanwhile, bands from the scene’s hey–day, like Motion City Soundtrack, Gym Class Heroes, and Cartel celebrated 20-year anniversaries for records that have become emblematic of pop-punk’s thriving era. Even the beloved Warped Tour came back after a six-year hiatus to celebrate its 30th anniversary with three U.S. dates.
This moment has been a long time coming. In the last five years, pop-punk and emo music has experienced one hell of a resurgence that has been celebrated, critiqued, and monopolized extensively. One aspect of the revival continues to pierce through: it is intrinsically rooted in Millennial nostalgia for the music that peaked in 2005. The industry at large has even leaned into that factor as a marketing ploy. When We Were Young, a festival dedicated to wistfully looking back on the genre’s peak, sprouted up in 2022 and events like Emo Nite continue to gain popularity each year. Warped Tour’s own return has been all about celebrating the festival’s legendary past. It’s clear everyone wants to conjure the allure pop-punk and emo had in the early 2000s.
It all points back to 2005, the year pop punk and emo exploded into the mainstream like never before, taking over the world of Billboard charts and MTV. Fall Out Boy released their seminal record From Under the Cork Tree, trading spots on TRL with My Chemical Romance, Paramore debuted onto the scene with All We Know Is Falling, and Panic! at the Disco’s LP Fever You Can’t Sweat Out proved just how vital the internet was to the genre’s success.
But pop-punk and emo’s meteoric rise wouldn’t be complete without bands like Motion City Soundtrack, Gym Class Heroes, and Cartel, who each helped build the genre’s wave into a tsunami in the early-aughts. Now, 20 years later, they’re reflecting on the genre’s takeover as they plot just how to keep the spirit alive.
“You could definitely feel that there was something brewing,” says Gym Class Heroes’ co-founder and lead singer, Travie McCoy. The shift was apparent to the genre-defying band. Gym Class Heroes formed in 1997, but it wasn’t until 2005 that their eclectic mix of rock sensibilities, rap verses, and hip-hop beats got the attention of record labels. They signed to Atlantic’s Fueled by Ramen in 2003. Two years later, the band released The Papercut Chronicles on Pete Wentz’s Fueled by Ramen imprint, Decaydance. Gym Class Heroes, like so many bands signed to Decaydance at the time, instantly got noticed by the scene for their association with pop-punk royalty.
“Fall Out Boy were and always have been our big brothers,” McCoy says. “We were on each other’s songs. We toured together. People knew us as the Fueled by Ramen Boys,” he says. GCH’s 2005 hit song, “Cupid’s Chokehold” is likely remembered by casual radio listeners for its hook, sung by none other than FOB’s lead singer Patrick Stump. That song secured the band their first top 10 hit with a music video starring a young Katy Perry, who was dating McCoy at the time. Emo was diverging into the pop world in every way imaginable.
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McCoy can’t quite put his finger on what his chosen family was able to capture that year. “Maybe it was just youthful angst,” he says before shaking his head at the adjective commonly used to characterize emo music. It’s not until he reminisces on small club shows and album writing sessions that he can sum up the energy. “We were just boys that didn’t grow up pretty, that wanted to feel pretty, and the music made us feel pretty,” he says.
That outcast ethos runs through the lyrics, music, and attitude of bands from the early-aughts era. Motion City Soundtrack even felt it while they were experiencing their own taste of commercial success in 2005. Just like GCH, the Minneapolis-bred band formed in 1997, and had developed a fanbase for their synth-pop inflected punk music. But it wasn’t until the release of 2005’s Commit This to Memory that Motion City Soundtrack started leveling up.
“You could feel the change in our size of audience,” says Motion City Soundtrack guitarist Josh Cain. By the time the band hit Warped Tour that summer, fans had already memorized all the words to the new album. Like their peers, Fall Out Boy and My Chem, Motion City Soundtrack was featured on MTV. It was just for the channel’s emerging artist vignette “10 Spot Drop,” but it was a turning point. “All of a sudden we were in this new level of existence,” Cain says.
Then came the 2005 Nintendo Fusion Tour. Motion City Soundtrack joined headliners Fall Out Boy as an opener alongside Panic! at the Disco. It was on that run that Motion City finally traded a tour van for a bus and first started using in-ears onstage. “It was wild to experience changes in people’s careers and lives and paths all tied together in this weird circus on the road,” Cain says.
While Motion City Soundtrack were trying on mainstream popularity for size, their tour mates were becoming full-on rockstars overnight. Panic! at the Disco, the youngest band on the tour, could barely grasp their success. Cain and Pierre distinctly remember a conversation with Panic! during the Las Vegas teens’ album release week. “They pressed 10,000 records for that band for the release week, and [the album] sold out,” Cain says.
“It was astronomical and they were like ‘Is that good?’” Pierre remembers.
For Cartel’s lead singer Will Pugh, 2005 and the years that followed were a whirlwind he’s still processing. “I honestly didn’t realize how many albums came out that year through 2006,” he says. That includes Cartel’s own Chroma, with its top-notch pop-rock riffs and poetic lyrics, it’s one of the defining records from that period. At the time of its release, the Atlanta-bred band was still playing 100-capacity clubs. It wasn’t until a year later that anthemic, hook-laden songs like “Honestly” and “Say Anything (Else)” dominated MySpace and secured Cartel with a major label deal.
Cartel’s moment in the limelight included appearances on soundtracks for both John Tucker Must Die and Madden NFL 07. By 2007, the band got their close-up when they were featured on the MTV reality show Band in a Bubble, where they were expected to write their follow-up to Chroma while being broadcast live. “It was a pretty unique event for our world,” Pugh says of the spectacle.
According to Pugh, the onslaught of definitive pop-punk and emo music is a result of post 9/11 America. “The world became a much more serious place and I think emotions were running high,” he says, adding, “People just became a little bit more self-aware that they cared about things.”
It’s been 20 years since Gym Class Heroes, Motion City Soundtrack, and Cartel all released the records that would alter their careers — and become a part of the pop-punk and emo canon. Of course, each band honored their respective albums in distinct ways to celebrate the anniversary. But in that nostalgia-driven memorialization, the bands are adamant about using the moment as a jumping-off point for the future.“This isn’t at all the end. This is really just a new beginning for the band,” Pugh says.
This past fall, Cartel hit the road for the Chroma anniversary tour after taking a page from Taylor Swift’s book and re-recording the album. The fan response from both endeavors has been a gamechanger for the band. Next year, Cartel will release their fifth studio album, which Pugh promises to have a “harder, edgier” sound. “I want the impact that makes me, as a 40-year-old man, go out and start doing spin kicks in the front yard,” he says with a smile.
Motion City Soundtrack also released new material this year. In September, they dropped The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, their first album in 10 years. “It seemed almost dangerous to go back and make music,” says Cain as he and Pierre reflect on the success of Commit This to Memory. “There was a moment that came after that where I felt like I had to live up to something,” Pierre admits. Now, Motion City Soundtrack is “embracing that we have this history and that it’s great,” as Caine puts it. The result is an urgent, yet meditative record that crashes and swirls with splendid riffs and lyrics that toil over all the time that has passed.
McCoy also feels similar growing pains. “We’ve grown artistically. We’ve grown as men,” he says, referring to his peers and noting that most folks tend to be 40 year-olds with kids. “I’m stoked to see the maturity of the era,” he says. In November, Gym Class Heroes — which now consists of McCoy and multi-instrumentalist Tyler Pursel — played The Papercut Chronicles in its entirety for the first time ever. At those shows, the singer saw new faces. According to McCoy, it’s the perfect time for a fresh audience to tune into what was going on in 2005, and see where pop-punk and emo goes from here. “They’re getting the more mature version of us. But again, that thread that connected all of us is still there,” he says. Amongst the new faces at his shows, McCoy also noticed OG fans who had brought their kids. “This is a generational thing.”
In 2026, McCoy plans to put out a new Gym Class Heroes album; it will be their newest release in 14 years and the first without founding member Matt McGinley. “Gym Class never went anywhere,” McCoy says, despite some major lineup changes and a hiatus. “We went through some trials and tribulations, but I was always making Gym Class Heroes music,” he adds, referring to his solo work. The band’s return is also not about cashing in. “We are not putting this album out to catch the wave,” McCoy says. “This album was going to come out regardless if this shit was going on or not.”
Back in 2023, Cain recalls talking to All-American Rejects’ lead singer Tyson Ritter at the start of the band’s comeback tour. At the time, Ritter told him that the tour was just a test-run to see if people still cared. Both bands were ready for that not to be the case. Of course, they were dead wrong. “Being around each other and seeing the audience reaction, that’s the thing we’re feeding off,” Cain says.
What sealed the deal for McCoy was watching My Chemical Romance perform to stadiums of longtime fans and see the full-circle joy the band experienced. “I’m looking at Gerard [Way]’s face, and you can just see the kid in him,” says McCoy, who still keeps up with MCR bassist Mikey Way. In phone calls, the two often talk about the scene’s resurgence. “We both knew it was bound to happen again. I’m just glad it happened in my lifetime,” he says.
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Nostalgia may be the catalyst for these bands to get back into the studio and for the latest influx of the early-aughts pop-punk and emo movement, but it’s not the genre’s lifeblood — that would be its dedicated fanbase. As fans sell out anniversary tours, strain their vocal chords at shows, and continue to support their favorite bands, they’re the ones keeping the scene alive and well.
The bands know how fleeting the moment can be. Pugh wants fans to keep the momentum alive. “Don’t let it die. Keep showing up, keep supporting,” Pugh implores fans in a direct plea. “It only happens because you guys show up.”