50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums

Distillers frontwoman Brody Dalle was just 18 when she ditched a women's shelter in Australia, wed Rancid's Tim Armstrong in the United States and signed to his label Hellcat Records. But she reached global demigoddess status in 2002 after her rags-to-riches gutter-punk ballad "The Young Crazed Peeling" first debuted on MTV – inspiring a wave of young women with liberty spikes and a thirst for freedom. "There should be more girls playing rock," Dalle told Safety Pin Girl in 2002, "and not preaching about the fact that they're female. That’s obviously a part of it when you’re up there, but you just gotta fuckin' work." Leave it to band as dauntless as the Distillers to sneak a song about the Seneca Falls Convention into Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4; or mine pop gold from the crusty underside of L.A. in "City of Angels." She later expanded on the album title in an interview for Sink Hole Zine, conducted outside a New Haven restroom in 2002. "I was watching a documentary on Sing Sing Death House, the prison," she recalled. "I really liked the title as a reference for a person. Like in dream books, a house represents yourself, your body. That's where it came from. Sing Sing Death House is not a catharsis, it's just a representation of dealing with shit." S.E.