“POP PUNK”
By FuZ


When the FBI and ATF had David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas surrounded, they tried to compel him to surrender and come out by playing what they deemed objectionable music at insane volumes at him and his followers for days on end. The same things over and over again for days on end. This is obviously an attempt at mild torture designed to coerce certain behaviors.

So what is it that I am being coerced into doing?!

I turn on the radio and it’s the same chugging 4 chord progressions, and the same nasally vocal singing the same song about the pitfalls of love or just plain being stupid, and the same quick snap drum changes, all with the same one-string guitar melody hook interspersed throughout. Pop Punk. When will it end? How long can it continue to fester on our radios and in our heads long after we’d no longer have it there.

I am sick of these clever little songs with their teeny pop appeal. Why am I sick of them? Not because it’s altogether bad songwriting – a little cliché and humor can work well in a song. It’s because all of these songs are SO MUCH THE SAME. And it has to stop.

How is it that so many bands can sound so much LIKE each other and still get signed and played? Is there no end to the tedium that the mass audience can stand? Is it really what it seems: that many people just want to hear “new” but similar versions of what they already like, over and over again?

For goodness sakes! Change the rhythm. Slow the tempo occasionally. Explore chords beyond Power Chords. Let the instruments harmonize and communicate with and against each other in new and unexpected ways. Shift the paradigm. And STOP SINGING THROUGH YOUR NOSES!!! It’s grating and unnecessary.

I’m sure that you can make a lot of money and get a lot of girls by playing this music, but for the sake of everyone with a mind and a soul, PLEASE think like an artist for one minute.

Real punk was 180 degrees away from the sensibility of pop punk. It was about something real and perhaps less happy. It shook things up, and many of the great punk bands had signature sounds. Pop punk is everything that old school punk despised. Okay, fine. But who believes that these pop punk cookie cutter songs will ever be CLASSICS?

Do something new. It is depressing to think that all readily available music will be like this just because it sells. Television has swapped over to Reality Television with a fury because it SELLS. Is reality television more artful or more gratifying that a well-written scripted show? I doubt it. But it sells.

Pop punk is not punk; it’s just pop. An over-sweet flavor full of bubbles and air that leaves you with nothing afterwards but empty calories. Let’s move on.

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