GAYLE released her song “abcdefu” back in August. The song was the fifth official release for GAYLE, now 17 years old, and the first since she signed on with major music label Atlantic. A few months later, “abcdefu” made its way up the charts after going viral on TikTok. On November 27, it debuted at number 63 on the Global 200 chart, which looks at song performance in some 200 different places across the world. It climbed to number one on January 15 and stayed there for four weeks before dropping one spot to number two, where it stayed throughout March. Her song debuted on the Hot 100 at number 51 on December 4, one week later than it did on the Global 200, reached the top 10 in January and held on between third and fourth during March.

You could say this is just another TikTok hit, but a closer look at the charts reveals two noteworthy points. First, there is an impression that, as with songs by other new American artists, “abcdefu” received more attention through streaming outside her home country first, and the US market imported the enthusiasm back. Second, and unlike the case with streaming, the song quickly racked up a huge amount of domestic airplay—more in line with what would be expected from a major artist, not a newly established one. In other words, radio plays are now behind Hot 100 successes more than streams are. It is also a sign that what started as a fad and gained momentum for the past year or two has now become totally mainstream. More specifically, it marks a pop punk revival and perhaps the return of the guitar.

Many people hear Olivia Rodrigo—or, more accurately, “good 4 u”—in “abcdefu.” What is most important here is not the similarity between the songs but the way in which Rodrigo presents hers. If you are only experiencing her album SOUR through the studio version or music videos, she will naturally come across as ever the teenage Disney songwriter. But if you watch her live performances, you can see she is also a traditional pop rock artist with a backing band. Her image is less of the solo artist and more of someone who aggressively keeps pace with their other band members. So even if words like pop rock and band are readily associated with live performances, Rodrigo comes across completely differently when she performs as compared to Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus. And with that, Rodrigo has become one of the trendsetters in the pop punk revival, or at least the artist who has embraced and capitalized on the trend more than anyone else in the mainstream.

Following its heyday in the early 2000s, pop punk went into a slow decline. In fact, guitar-centric pop rock as a whole was pushed out of focus. Once the more rhythm-heavy hip hop and R&B genres came to dominate the market, they absorbed some pop rock influence and pushed the boundaries of what the genre could do. Artists like Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD, rappers who went on to become rock stars, directly referenced pop/rock influences to create the music that suited them. Machine Gun Kelly made a name for himself as a rapper but has since become a forerunner of the pop punk revival through to his single “I Think I’m OKAY” in 2019 and then his 2020 album, Tickets to My Downfall. Billboard even put him on the cover of their most recent issue, billing him “pop punk’s crown prince.”

As this was happening, creators like LILHUDDY, jxdn and Nessa Barrett were beginning their musical careers on TikTik, the result of which was that pop punk became the music to define Generation Z. It was also around that time that young new artists like KennyHoopla and WILLOW caught their lucky breaks in pop punk after working through several different styles. Bands like Meet Me @ the Altar and Magnolia Park have started to gain traction as well. People who are already influential draw attention to the genre and new artists find opportunities as a result as well. A great deal of this is thanks to blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, a godfather of the genre, who has worked on many tracks and given them their particular sound.

It should come as no surprise that pop radio, which has been ruled by hip hop and R&B for over a decade, is jumping on the trend. Allotting some airtime to guitar music when the opportunity presents itself helps advance the rock cause in the market. Since the start of 2021, these allocations have clearly become justified. GAYLE’s song “abcdefu” became just the right song for just the right time. And that is why the song did not start and stop as a passing TikTok fad but is rather one of the biggest hits at the moment.