Review: Taft Street by Bad Year

Orlando Florida based pop punk outfit Bad Year, fronted by real life meme Glen Ramierez with Evan Torres and Kyle Lawton on guitars, Jared Cove on bass and Joey Crochet on drums, recently put out its first single, Taft Street. Bad Year can be considered contemporary pop punk for fans of Knuckle Puck, Seaway, Cautioners and The Starting Line. With a catchy guitar riffs and strong vocals from Glen, this band is most definitely up and coming, especially with its large networking ability through groups like The Defend Pop Punk Group on Facebook, which I myself frequent.
  The track itself is, in the most basic sense of the phrase, catchy yet generic pop punk. The track doesn't show anything that would stand out in the current pop punk scene. However this is honestly okay in my book, as unique isn't always a good thing. What Bad Year has done with this first single is taken a genre that is very much full of its stereotypes and archetypes that its known for, and made it their own. The lyrics here are catchy and overall easy to relate to as a whole as most pop punk tracks are. The instruments are well put together, and overall very fun and easy to move to. I couldn't stop myself from two-stepping a bit in my writing space to the track.
  In short, I'm going to give this track a fair 6.5 to a 7/10, mainly because it does what I think pop punk does, and Bad Year does that well, makes catchy, easy to relate to and most of all fun tracks that their audience can get behind.


Bad Year's Bandcamp