Pop-punk is back in fashion

The year is 2003. You've just arrived home from a terrible day of middle school to learn that Evanescence's "Bring Me to Life" has once again claimed the top spot on the VH1 Top 20 Video Countdown. (You're happy for Amy Lee, specifically.) After diving into a sleeve of "Xtra Cheddar" Goldfish, you slip the "Freaky Friday" soundtrack into your Discman. You want to have the lyrics to Simple Plan's "Happy Together" memorized by that sleepover on Saturday.

Here we are, 18 years later, and I have never been more sure that time is a flat circle. Bennifer is making out all over Los Angeles, again. The cast of "Friends" got paid millions of dollars to film an episode of television, again. Travis Barker is featured on a bop on the charts, again.

In fashion, too, the collective dress code of late appears to be hovering between the Powerpuff Girls and Bratz dolls. People are taking this new-millennium revival so seriously, in fact, that the beleaguered "whale tale" is making a comeback. But there's another aesthetic that's cropping up among all-powerful Generation Z-ers who didn't experience Y2K the first time around. That's pop-punk, and it's back, baby!