From punk to pop-punk: How the most raw musical movement of all time went bubblegum

A teenage breakup can feel like the end of the world. For Set It Off frontman Cody Carson, it became the beginning of something even bigger.

It started with New Found Glory’s ‘Sticks and Stones’.

“I was going through a breakup – the kind of high school breakup where it hurts you unbelievably — and they really found me,” the pop punk singer opens up.

“Them, and Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance… that was my breakthrough into punk.”

Like most punk fans’ route to rebellion, his wasn’t through a political manifesto or a spikey mohawk. It was through a record that truly understood why he was crying in his bedroom.

By the early Noughties, punk looked and sounded very different from the movement that had exploded in Britain and New York in the Seventies. This time, the guitars were polished, the choruses anthemic and the songs were way more concerned with crushes, breakups and suburban boredom. Pop punk had arrived — and the genre had gone bubblegum.

Still, millions of teens wanted a taste. But had punk really lost its bite, or just found a sweeter way to deliver it?

Punk has always been pop

Punk has always been poppier than it might appear.

The Ramones wrapped catchy pop melodies in buzzsaw guitars, and made no secret of where those hooks came from.

“I hate to blow the mystique, but at the time, we really liked bubblegum music, and we really liked the Bay City Rollers,” Joey Ramone once admitted. Heck, the punk icon even revealed that the Scottish boyband’s chant-heavy hit ‘Saturday Night’ helped inspire the “Hey! Ho! Let’s go!” hook in ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’.

For Adam Lazzara, frontman of 00s emo pop punk superstars Taking Back Sunday, punk was never about following a strict musical formula, anyway.

“I think punk, to me, is that when everyone else says no, you figure out where ‘yes’ is and you go get it,” he shares as we sit down with the band.

His is a definition that feels closer to the spirit of punk than any argument about how distorted the guitars should be.

Pop punk didn’t invent punk’s sweet tooth. It just polished the production and brought those hooks to a new generation. The sound was changing, but the instinct behind it arguably hadn’t.

But, that route between punk and pop wasn’t necessarily a straight line. For American punk rock band The Menzingers, the brighter American version of punk proved to be a path back to the British bands who started it.

“I think as teenagers, the first American punk bands that we started listening to were pop punk bands like Blink-182, Green Day and then even bands like Rancid,” vocalist Greg Barnett explains.

“But when we got into The Clash, we were like, ‘Okay, there’s so much more you can do with this music than just a few chords and some pop melodies.’ The UK punk bands that we got into really expanded what we started to do musically.”

Pop punk hadn’t cut them off from punk’s past — it had led them to it.

“English punk was really huge for us, especially The Clash,” bassist Eric Keen adds, “We built the band around The Clash. We are Clash historians in a kind of ridiculous way. We love everything about them.”

The deeper they dug, the greater the punk influences that came, with Eric also naming The Specials and Cock Sparrer among the British bands who shaped them.

Fifty years on, it is the culture surrounding the music that The Menzingers’ bassist believes is still going strong.

“So much has changed, but the energy and the community, I feel, have stayed the same,” Eric explains.

“People are still going to the shows and building a community around it. That’s the most important and exciting thing to me.”

Pop punk goes mainstream

The Nineties saw Green Day and The Offspring break into the mainstream, before Blink-182, New Found Glory, Sum 41 and Fall Out Boy carried punk’s poppier side into arenas, skateparks and millions of teenage bedrooms.

For Set if Off’s Cody Carson, the appeal of this new generation came down to individual songs. “On Sticks and Stones, ‘Understatement’ was my favourite track. It probably still is,” he says.

“With Fall Out Boy, I think I’d go for ‘Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year’. And for My Chemical Romance, ‘Mama’ is one of the most interesting tracks ever written.”

Pop punk’s growing commercial power also made it easier than ever to discover. You could find it on the radio, television, a film soundtrack or the T-shirts in H&M. It became an accessible way into a much wider musical history.

What’s punk anyway?

Not everyone welcomed punk’s glossy new era. As major label budgets grew, music videos dominated MTV and choruses became increasingly radio friendly, others loved to toss around “sell-out” insults.

Motion City Soundtrack guitarist Joshua Cain has little interest in joining in.

“Who are we to police what is punk and what is not?” the rocker asks.

“We wanted to do the right things, go with our gut and make music that meant something to us. It wasn’t ever done for anybody else, and I think that’s what punk is, for me.”

“As long as your band is true to what you fucking want, I think that is pretty punk,” Cain adds.

For the US rock band’s frontman Justin Pierre, being true to yourself doesn’t have to mean staying the same forever, either.

“Being true to yourself can also mean, ‘We’re going this way with what we’re doing, and then we’re going this way with what we’re doing,’” he says.

“The systems in place want to put you in boxes. I think there is something very punk rock about doing the opposite of that.”

Set It Off’s Cody Carson has an even more direct response to anyone who says pop punk isn’t “real” punk.

“Stop putting labels on things. Stop being elitist. Stop gatekeeping,” he shares with us.

“Let people like what they like. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t affect you. Let people enjoy things!”

For all its pop punk leaning, for Minneapolis-hailing Motion City Soundtrack, punk’s meaning has become even more political today.

“We were staying out of being a super political band because it would have felt a little forced,” Joshua Cain admits, “Not that we aren’t political, but it just didn’t feel like it worked. Now, the world’s changed so much.”

With “the system so broken”, Cain tells us, “you basically have to fight for your rights at this point”.

Frontman Justin Pierre brings that fight back to something even closer to home. “Try not to look at people as the problem. It’s the systems in place,” he says, “Help your neighbours. Work in your community — just start there. It’s really simple.”

Born in the teen bedroom

Now, Set It Off are becoming the pop punk gateway band for a new generation.

“It’s surreal and it’s weird,” Carson tells us.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of bands come out that have referenced us. Friends of mine in the industry will say, ‘Dude, I keep hearing your name being used as a reference for what to work towards inside a studio when other bands are writing.’”

The songs have travelled further than he ever expected, too.

“There are so many songs where I’m just writing about what I went through specifically, and then you look out into the crowd and see someone angrily singing it back at you,” he says. “You’re like, ‘Wow, you really tied this to something in your personal life.’”

“You never expect how it’s going to reach somebody or how they’re going to connect,” he adds. “It makes us so happy and truly grateful that anybody can see us as a gateway, a connection or a way to cope.”

Sure, punk went bubblegum. But it gave another generation something to sink its teeth into all over again.

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