2002’s 10 most unavoidable pop punk hits, ranked from worst to best

2. Sum 41 - "Still Waiting"

Many of pop punk's biggest bands had already established themselves within thriving independent punk scenes before hitting it big, but Sum 41 were no such band. They'd been on Island Records since their 2000 debut EP Half Hour of Power, and they didn't seem like they were channelling the sounds of the unsung punk underground. As they told you on their biggest song, Maiden and Priest were the gods that they praised. They were metalheads at heart, and their interest in pop punk was genuine, but it seemed a little opportunist. For their 2001 debut album All Killer No Killer, they linked up with Enema of the State producer Jerry Finn, the perfect candidate to help Sum 41 become pop punk's Next Big Thing. Most of the album offered up the kind of formulaic, easily digestible pop punk that was guaranteed to be a success, and its aforementioned huge single "Fat Lip" combined pop punk with rap rock, the other biggest mainstream rock trend in 2001. They're good players and Deryck Whibley's a good songwriter, but in hindsight, All Killer No Killer seemed a little dishonest. It did, however, make them predictably huge, and more success tends to allow for more creative freedom, which Sum 41 embraced on 2002's much better Does This Look Infected?.

Does This Look Infected? is a darker, heavier record than its predecessor, and it openly embraced Sum 41's love of metal and other heavier forms of rock, with just enough of their usual pop punk appeal still left intact. No Jerry Finn this time -- longtime collaborator Greig Nori produced -- and the band employed thrash riffs, screamed vocals, and other antagonistic traits while writing about far more serious topics than they had previously. Sum 41 might not have had cool kid cred, but they were an increasingly good band that loved heavy metal, punk rock, hip hop, and other angry subgenres, and their influences came together more naturally than ever on Does This Look Infected?. To help introduce the world to their new sound, they promoted the album with lead single "Still Waiting." Its video poked fun at the trendier rock bands that the hype machine said were saving rock from bands like Sum 41, opening with a scene where Sum 41 meets with Island Records who tells them that "number" bands are out, and "the" bands like The Strokes, The Hives, The Vines, and The White Stripes are in, and that Sum 41 should change their name to The Sums. The video fit right in with the cliquey shot-throwing of the TRL era, but the song felt like something totally new. It opens with a vocal hook and matching guitar riff that sounds straight out of The Offspring's playbook, before upping the aggression exponentially for a verse where Deryck screams his head off over a riff that borrows from "Masters of Puppets." In the video, the Island Records guy says he's sure the new album has "all sorts of songs about skateboarding and getting dumped," but in reality, the song was inspired by the war and terrorism that dominated the news cycle in the early 2000s. Nothing felt cynical, dishonest, or opportunist about this; "Still Waiting" sounded like the exact kind of music that Sum 41 always wanted to be writing, and their fusion of aggressive tendencies and pop smarts was seamless.