They willingly embraced their fate of being low-calorie, sarcastic but safe rabble-rousers. Henceforth, the bandРІР‚в„ўs output would hinge on the hits and largely be supported by an audience that had very little interest in punk rock as the rowdy manifestation of a social movement begun by working class kids in the United Kingdom and bohemian provocateurs in New York. What Green DayРІР‚в„ўs Dookie and the OffspringРІР‚в„ўs own Smash had started, Americana unconditionally finished. There was no longer any pretext that at least one strain of punk-the strain that made money-did not solely belong to kids on longboards and TRL devotees. And so, enter the Offspring, ready to take the next logical step and monetize the shit out of the skeleton of the punk sound. And Out Come the Wolves, but there was a hard cap to the household name success a band fronted by a guy who sounded like a werewolf could achieve NOFX famously renounced the radio, but they were always the thinking manРІР‚в„ўs Blink-182 anyway. Brett, half of their songwriting team Social Distortion managed a few hits at the beginning of the decade, but no one expected them to really go all the way Rancid banged on and sold a ton of records, in large part due to 1995РІР‚в„ўs. In the meantime, Bad Religion had gone flaccid mid-coitus in 1994, having lost Mr. It would take the world years to recover from this outbreak. Blink-182 lurked in the shadows like the Spanish flu, ready to defecate all over the party, while behind them a backward-baseball-cap horde of pinched-voice menaces like New Found Glory and Fenix TX followed. Most of these groups who toed this party line very clearly grew up listening to the Faction or the Descendents and settled on aping one or the other.

Generally, the bands were signed to either Epitaph or Fat Wreck Chords and offered up some bricolage of skate-punk and pop-punk.

The few punk bands of the РІР‚в„ў90s that had broken through to the non-college airwaves were not exactly a diverse representation of the best the genre had to offer. The tunes about Tehran and killing the president just werenРІР‚в„ўt gonna pay the bills. There was some cutthroat calculus here: In fairly obvious humor, they found their salvation. Of course, theyРІР‚в„ўd still duly record their share of somewhat melodic hardcore skate-punk chant-alongs, but these perfunctory offerings would be punctuated by an increasing number of songs clearly intended for A&R men, for Top 40 radio, for arenas. They were just a bunch of dudes who got famous for songs that sounded nothing like the rest of their oeuvre and followed that to a logical endpoint. ItРІР‚в„ўs not like the Offspring had an ideology or even an affinity for leftist politics that would make РІР‚Сљselling outРІР‚Сњ unseemly. Instead of up-tempo screeds against you know, stuff, they unleashed a whirlwind of big, boisterous, (mostly) inoffensive jams jams the jocks liked even more than the punks. This was the moment when they decided to go for it-to become a sort of Guy Fieri punk rock. Americana was the moment when this midtier punk rock band from Southern California, benefitting from Nirvana smashing the college rock/alternative glass ceiling, decided to not be some two-hit wonder and seize the initiative. ItРІР‚в„ўs not their best album, per se, but itРІР‚в„ўs by far their most important, as it boldly carved the path theyРІР‚в„ўd follow until the end of the damn line. Twenty years ago, the Offspring released Americana.

Americana the offspring full album