Punk Revival

Punk revival refers to a period from the early 1990s where many leading alternative rock artists, including Nirvana, acknowledged the influence of earlier punk rock acts, and the major record companies once again saw punk bands as potentially profitable. In 1993, California's Green Day and Bad Religion were both signed to major labels. The next year, Green Day released “Dookie”, which became a huge hit, selling eight million albums in just over two years. Bad Religion's “Stranger Than Fiction” was certified gold. Other California punk bands on indie label Epitaph, run by Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz, also began garnering mainstream success.

By 1998, the punk revival had commercially stalled, but not for long. Pop punk band Blink-182's 1999 release, “Enema of the State”, reached the Billboard top ten and sold four million copies in less than a year. New pop punk bands such as Sum 41, Simple Plan, Yellowcard and Good Charlotte achieved major sales in the first decade of the 2000s. In 2004, Green Day's “American Idiot” went to number one on both the U.S. and U.K. charts.

This description is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses materials from the Wikipedia article "Punk rock".