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Pop-punk: jewels or junk?

© Jason C. Reeher

In the mid-1970’s, the Ramones were the first real punk band in America – and perhaps in the entire world. The leather jacket-clad boys from Brooklyn brought a whole new energy to rock and roll, and sang songs about getting girls and getting high – age old themes of the genre. Decades later, the Ramones style has begat myriad pop-punk soundalike bands, from Green Day to virtually every emo band on the block. What have the Brudders wrought?

Some punk purists despise all pop-punk. These folks feel like punk should remain what it once was in the hands of bands like the Stooges and the Sex Pistols: a vibrant, violent, anti-establishment brand of ferocious rock and roll. To dilute the most potent force in rock history with pop stylings is to neuter punk music – and change its very essence in the process.

Yet, there can be no doubt that the Ramones legacy has provided the general public with some very talented, if more chart-friendly, bands. In the 1980’s and early 1990’s, Southern California groups like Bad Religion, the Offspring, and Rancid all used the Ramones rave-ups as a major influence in their own respective brand of tuneful punk. Most of these bands seemed to find the Ramones’ trademark humor as an especially enduring trait – most especially heard in the no-rules, all-styles-welcome approach of NOFX.

Other groups took the Ramones’ license to craft memorable songs, and created a new genre. Emo – short for ‘emotional’ – was most likely born within far flung pockets of regional punk scenes, from the hardcore clubs of Washington, D.C., to the garages of Washington State. But early emo bands like the Fugazi predecessor, Rites of Spring, and the Seattle scene first-wavers Sunny Day Real Estate both had some elements of the pop-punk sound. Tunefulness would be a requirement of all emo bands to come, and using the Ramones’ “Rock and Roll Radio” approach would aid the vast popularity of new millenium emo artists from Dashboard Confessional to Thursday.

So we see that pop-punk has had a huge influence on many bands. But did pop music unduly influence punk, taking away much of the original rebellious spirit of punk music? The answer is most probably yes.

Let’s face it, punk casualties like Sid Vicious and Stiv Bators would probably blanch at the very thought of emo. Something about all those clean-scrubbed white kids from good homes, with their horn-rimmed glasses, strumming perfectly tuned guitars just doesn’t sit right with the basic ideals of punk.