Robyn Writes

The Seven Basic Pop-Punk Songs

You may or may not have heard of a book called The Seven Basic Plots. According to Christopher Booker’s enormous tome, there are only seven basic plots in all of literature, and that everything else is just a derivative from those plots. Well, I’m here to tell you that actually, there are only really seven pop-punk songs. You’ve been to a pop-punk show, you own a Blink-182 album or two. You know it to be true! So without further ado, here’s the seven basic pop-punks and how to spot them.

1. Hometown Blues, Thy Name is Ennui

The first, and possibly the most recognisable pop-punk song, is the one about hating where you come from. And is this not something we’ve all experienced, predominately when we’re about 16 and it feels like the whole world outside of our suburban hellholes is just waiting to be discovered? Plenty of people have made a lot of money writing about this kind of disillusion.

This pop-punk can be flipped on its head as well, and the common theme of ‘I left but dammit, I miss everything and I want to go home to my mum where everything is nice and simple forever’ isn’t exactly uncommon either. And just occasionally, you’ll find both sides slammed into the same song, which is really what it all ends up as when you’re a little bit older and wiser and not just pretending to be a teenager for the record label.

Top pop-punks: Simple Plan – I’m Just A Kid, Good Charlotte – Waldorfworldwide, Count To Four – Lavender Town (actually, this one is basically ALL of these pop-punks in one)

2. That Girl Ripped My Heart Out of My Chest and Pissed On It

Pop-punk found its roots in songs about girls. Descendents built pretty much a whole career on writing albums about their feelings, and Blink-182 perfected it on their classic track ‘Dammit’. And let’s face it, a pop-punk album wouldn’t be the same without a track about how a girl (or well, anyone really) totally broke the singer’s heart and how everything sucks.

Unfortunately, these days, there’s a lot of pop-punk bands who don’t know how to write about anything else, or how to acknowledge that actually, there might be some problems that are their own fault too and not just their lovers. Buuuuut sometimes, when you feel like you’ll be broken forever, there’s nothing like falling back on some good old-fashioned rage. It’s impossible to find a record that doesn’t have traces of heartbreak hidden all over it, or splashed wildly across it.

Top pop-punks: Real Friends – I’ve Given Up On You, Fall Out Boy – Sending Postcards From a Plane Crash (Wish You Were Here), Never Heard Of It – She’s A Dick

3. Positive Mental Attitude, Brah

Hey! Keep your chin up! Do something cool! It’s all about the PMA, dude. And pop-punk has got plenty of it. Far less anger about real important things than straight up punk, but with a sense of fun that punk can easily forget, pop-punk provides the great middle way, full of sugary, colourful fun. If pop-punk was a drink, it’d be orange soda, and not the diet kind.

These are my favourite kind of pop-punk tracks. They’re full of fun and life. These are the kind of tracks that pick me up when I’m down. They keep me on course, and they keep me thinking posi. And that’s what it’s all about. Keep it real, yo!

Top pop-punks: Millencolin – No Cigar, New Found Glory – Selfless, The Movielife – Me And You Vs Them

4. Hanging With The Bros Forever and Ever

It’s time to head out on tour and get crazy! There might lots of drinking, or even a few illicit narcotics, but there’s absolutely bound to be mad hijinks, skateboarding injuries and a prison trip. You guessed it – our next pop-punk trope is about hanging with your bros.

If there’s one thing pop-punk does well, it’s solidarity. All that bitching about your hometown and wasted opportunities just melts away into the background when your friends come into the mix. Just don’t forget that chicks can be bros too.

Top pop-punks: Set Your Goals – Summer Jam, Blink-182 – Reckless Abandon, Mest – Rooftops

5. I’m In Love and I Don’t Care Who Knows It

Of course, before all the torment and the heartbreak, there has to be love. And a good pop-punk love song has absolutely no competition. Pure of heart with loads of melody, you can’t help but feel swept up in a romance that isn’t even yours. And if you are madly in love, then every single song describes how you feel, because they’re way more real and appropriate than anything the Beatles did, or anything in a musical, right?

As one of the happier pop-punk tropes, it’s also one of my top ones. I’ve had a pop-punk romance playlist going since about 2005 and I’ve got no sign of slowing that down.

Top pop-punks: Sugarcult – Lost In You, Say Anything – Crush’d, Candy Hearts – I Miss You

6. I’m Just In Touch With My Feelings, Jeez!

Pop-punk can be deep too, you know. It can reach down into the very essence of human emotion and get all introspective and speculative. Don’t you even accuse it of being pretty and vacuous. Of course, it’s not as brainy as emo, and many of pop-punk’s graduating class (like Brand New, and if anyone says the first record isn’t pop-punk, I’ll fight you) have moved onto bigger, more serious art forms.

However, something neat tends to happen when pop-punk gets serious. Whether it’s battling personal demons, figuring out where it all went wrong or even just trying to decide where to turn to next, a lot of bands tend to turn out some of their best stuff when they start to think a little left-field. And that’s why we’ll never get a decent All Time Low record.

Top pop-punks: Descendents – When I Get Old, Amber Pacific – Follow Your Dreams Forget The Scene, Green Day – Redundant

7. I Hate Everything. Even That Puppy. And Your Mum.

Despite the assumption that pop-punk is a happy genre full of bouncy songs and floppy haircuts, it’s often filled with a lot of rage as we’ve seen above. However, a lot of the time, that rage is simply directed towards anyone and everything, because let’s face it – everything sucks.

Bands like Descendents absolutely own tracks like this, but they do it in a way that isn’t cliché or overstated, opting for a bit of humour instead. Of course, you can go the other way entirely, but virtually everyone knows ‘I’m Not A Loser’ and can’t remember the name of that song by those dudes who supported New Found Glory one time, so I guess they can suck it.

Top pop-punks: Say Anything – Hate Everyone, Descendents – Everything Sucks, Midtown – Empty Like The Ocean

Don’t get me wrong – for all my gentle mocking, I love a lot of pop-punk. But I’m yet to truly uncover a pop-punk track that doesn’t somehow fit into these broadly termed categories. Go on, pop-punk kids of the internet – prove me wrong. Write me a song that doesn’t fit into emotions typically associated with being in your teens or twenties. Or, if you’ve found another basic pop-punk trope, stick your answers on a postcard and email them to ripper@twobeatsoff.co.uk! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put the entire New Found Glory discography on repeat forever and ever and ever.

Why you should see New Found Glory before you die

I did begin to sit down and write a review of the Kerrang! Tour from a week or so ago. Every band that night was spectacular in one way or another – While She Sleeps are new, brash and have a confidence well beyond their field of experience; letlive. released my favourite album of last year, performed a Black Flag cover I didn’t hate (I have a serious issue with people doing Black Flag covers, it’s like trying to rewrite The Lord’s Prayer or something) and are one of the most exciting bands I’ve seen live in a long, long time; The Blackout had us in the palm of their hand once again and strutted through a great set, making the venue explode with the squeals of teenage girls and the shouts of boys who are no longer ashamed to like them. And then there were New Found Glory.

This is where I got stuck. I just can’t review a New Found Glory show. It feels far too obvious to me. It begins to get way too personal. So I decided I couldn’t review them and scrapped what I’d written previously. However, I will tell you why you should go see New Found Glory before you die. It just might be a bit more unconventional than I had planned.

The main reason that I can’t review an NFG show is because I can’t help but break into the personal anecdote. I have seen New Found Glory every year of my life since I was 13 except in 2005. From 2004 onwards, I have missed one tour, but I’ve seen them at almost every festival appearance they’ve made in the UK since that date. Seeing New Found Glory every year has near become ritual for me. I don’t need to sit down and learn all the words any more, even for the new albums, because the songs are so goddamn catchy – in a couple of listens, I’m set. That 2004 date was my second gig when I was just 13. In December 2006, they played on my birthday. But even when it wasn’t necessarily a “special” event, every NFG gig has always seemed momentous; they always come at certain important points of my life. Even the K! tour the other week struck gold, in the final year of my undergraduate life and in the last term where I’m allowed any fun. NFG have been there as I’ve grown up. Like so many others, they’ve led me through my awkward teenage years and shaped me into the person I’ve become.

A New Found Glory set is almost like therapy for me. I know (mostly) what’s coming up, and it’s one of the very few occasions that I will just completely lose my shit and go for it. The other week, I was surrounded by fifteen year old kids who barely recognised the older songs to hardened NFG veterans bellowing every word. Nobody stood still. Every time I see them, it is exactly the same as any other time – they come on, they play an incredible set, we all get worn out and sweaty, we lose our voices, we laugh and smile as we see the years of friendship that have tied this band together and we look at our friends and we realise that we would rather be nowhere else. I ended up separated from my friends the other night, but every now and again, I’d see a flash of them in the crowd or hear Mike yelling out the words (because he is the loudest person I know) and know they were having just as good a time as I was. Nobody had to get pulled out – even though there were crowd surfers – and nobody looked like they were having a bad time. It’s impossible to not smile at all during a New Found Glory set, it really is. Even if you’re not a pop-punk fan, the atmosphere is infectious.

Pop-punk is not dead. New Found Glory have proven that. They even named a tour after it. It is getting watered down though. In the early 2000s, don’t forget that we were previously swarmed by pop-punk bands . You couldn’t walk around the corner without being assaulted by a four-chord structure, the bass turned up and that drumline. Maybe I’m not being fair to the new kids on the block, but back then, it all seemed far catchier and while it wasn’t innovative, it didn’t all quite swim together. You could tell the difference between Mest, Good Charlotte and Millencolin. Fall Out Boy walked tall and proud in front of the whole lot. You can’t quite do the same today. Therefore, it’s worth going to see the masters. Forget your All Time Lows, who themselves take their name from New Found Glory, your You Me At Sixes and your We Are The In Crowds. See New Found Glory and you’ll see why pop-punk isn’t dead. You’ll see what pop-punk should be and what it can be – every NFG album has a different sound and a different feel to it. They’re much better live than Fall Out Boy ever were. They’ve still got the punk sensibilities they started with, even if they’ve grown up a bit. And rest assured, they will always, always play ‘My Friends Over You’. That’s worth it alone.