Yellowcard

Headliners on this year's alt-rock Warped tour and winners of the viewer-voted MTV2 Award at the VMAs, Cali quintet Yellowcard (named after a soccer term) is crashing the charts with its platinum pop-punk debut, Ocean Avenue. Frontman Ryan Key shares the view.

ON WINNING AT THE VMAS I didn't know I was weepy, but so they tell me. It didn't help that the Beastie Boys were handing us the award, because they're one of my all-time favorite bands. Meeting Bruce Willis was pretty huge. Every time we walked by, he was like, "Yeah, Yellowcard!" And he shook our hands, it was cool!

ON LIFE ON THE ROAD We just got our first tour bus last year. We'd been driving ourselves around in our eight-passenger van. We had a shower on the bus for our Warped tour, and I was impressed-everyone got a shower every day. Nobody left their towels lying around. [But] when there are 12 people on the bus it gets kind of disgusting.

ON THE BREAKUP ANTHEM "ONLY ONE" It's very much like a guy, isn't it? I wrote about how it felt to be really emotionally involved with someone you don't want to be with anymore. Like, "Sorry, gotta do this on my own." I wrote it just so that my ex could have it. It's hard to think about it being the song little kids in middle school are breaking up to. That wasn't really what we were going for.

ON THE FANS I don't know if girls follow us around. No underwear on the stage. Not really.