The issue and the discussion about punk vs pop-punk often has to do with the sound, the commercial accessibility, and the overall ethos of the musicians and scene in which the band operates. It all gets a bit pissy at times. I love the punk music and punk ethos of Husker Du and Bad Religion, and I have also always been a big fan of Blink-182. So, I really enjoyed a piece I read the other day from an excellent Substack newsletter Punk N' Coffee:
"Pop Punk Not Dead: the problem of fitting into the history of punk rock"
Pop punk always seemed to enter the history of punk through a side door, when the discussion was already underway and someone had set the rules of the debate. It was never a genre that arrived with a solemn proclamation or an aesthetic designed to command respect. For years it was read as a lesser version, a commercial shortcut, an unnecessary deviation, as if accessibility were incompatible with any form of depth. That reading, however, says less about pop punk than about punk’s recurring need to define itself through opposition. Because if this subgenre made anything clear, it was that the youthful experience is not always expressed as organized confrontation or frontal collision. Sometimes it manifests as persistent confusion, as poorly articulated frustration, as the feeling of failing at something that isn’t even fully understood.
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