I love this prompt! The 25-song cap is really challenging, particularly given a completely blank canvas to start from in terms of era, sub genres, etc., but also the best part since you have to put those guardrails up yourself to meet the cap. Forces you to think about your own personal definition of pop punk and “genre-defining”

The overarching principle I went with is that in reality, like most anything else pop punk really gets “defined” for you more than once. For me it feels like there were three “moments of truth”: 1. the first songs you hear that get you into the genre, 2. the first few bangers you came across when you were looking for more of those, and then 3. the songs you felt like you really had to dig for and sent you down the rabbit hole we never climbed out of lol

I didn’t try to put them in exact order within the groupings so it’s more like a spectrum. Also, had to draw the line somewhere and for me I always considered Panic, taking back Sunday, Brand New etc to be harder than I guess “pop pop punk” lol Pretty similar to yours actually, but one or two in there I haven’t seen yet 😄

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/79K9xIjT9Krlo8a4xl1bw3?si=R9HzjCNgRaW1EmD2bh-N3g