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.

Alkaline Trio – 21/5/10 [O2 Academy Birmingham]

To view photos for this show, see my Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/twobeatsoff/

There was a lot of trouble concerning this show. To begin with, I wasn’t even planning on going – I was going to catch the 30th anniversary Bad Religion show instead. However, my friend bought a ticket and wanted me to go with her, so I gave up on the Bad Religion (I could always dream that they were doing Reading Festival this year) and booked myself in. That same friend then didn’t get her ticket in time for the show and couldn’t go. It could have potentially turned into a disaster, but I’d persuaded Kitteh to come along a couple of weeks previously, so everything was just peachy in the end.

Alkaline Trio are always one of those bands that I’d missed on pretty much every tour they ever did. Even if I was in the same vicinity as them, I ended up missing them, which I found pretty weird for one of my favourite bands. I put it partly down to transport – I used to have to get my dad to drive me everywhere – and also down to lots of other bands touring at the same time. When you’re relying on other people to get you there, you have to go with what they say. So term time means easy access to Birmingham, which means I get to go to shit. And then get yelled at by my mother for spending money. However, I think if she’d have witnessed the Alkaline Trio set, she’d heartily approve.

First up on the bill were Me Vs Hero, a pop-punk band from Blackpool. Well, I say pop-punk, but this sure as hell wasn’t some Fall Out Boy shit – this was from the new school of pop-punk spliced with hardcore, which is precisely what I like. They were much better than I expected them to be, but then I realised that they would be when I saw their baseball t-shirts at the merch stand. To get a clear idea of their sound, imagine New Found Glory but with a lot more breakdowns and a lot more British. Though they may be lacking the diversity of NFG’s sound, they certainly weren’t lacking the passion and played brilliantly. The set was ridiculously fun, and I can tell that I’ll be hearing a lot more from them. The ‘pop-core’ sound is perfect for the summer and it wouldn’t surprise me to see a lot more jumping around, hair flying everywhere and sweet, sweet breakdowns at Reading. Even if their guitarist did have some very girly sounding screams.

Next up were Set Your Goals, also on Epitaph, which I suppose links how they were playing with Alkaline Trio. I thought that the two supporting bands possibly didn’t fit so well with the headliner, but even so, I was glad they were there. Would it be going too far to suggest that Set Your Goals were the best band of the evening? I certainly don’t think so. I saw SYG at Reading and, if I’m being honest, wasn’t all that impressed. Their sound was a bit weak then, but they had no problem owning the venue tonight with their own brand of pop-punk. Despite the lack of a circlepit, the set was excessively fun as they whipped out some old material in the form of ‘Goonies Never Say Die’ and some new stuff from their latest release, ‘This Will Be The Death Of Us’. The dual vocalist effect worked much better here than at Reading, but even so, I’d love to see Set Your Goals in a much smaller venue, as I think that’s where their sound would come out best. Not to mention the crowd would probably go fucking mental. Kitteh was very enthralled with Audelio’s screams as he threw his guitar at Jordan and took centre stage to show us all how to growl like a real man! The new material sounded absolutely stellar and I’m very much looking forwards to their next headline tour.

Alkaline Trio had the best opening of any band ever. Even better than when Story Of The Year came on to the Star Wars theme. Only Alkaline Trio can get away with dancing onto the stage to a bit of ghoulish pop. Fresh off their European tour, Alkaline Trio were headlining a big tour across the UK and Birmingham was the first to witness it. Dan Andriano came out with a fantastic beard, Matt Skiba had a proper old man cap… oh, if only fightclubsandwich were there. That was probably the most accessible part of their set however, because if you weren’t a huge Alkaline Trio fan, you’d have been entirely lost by half of their set. While they covered a couple of singles like ‘Private Eye’, ‘Stupid Kid’ and ‘We’ve Had Enough’, the vast majority of their set was built up of ‘From Here To Infirmary’ material and previous, leaving much of the audience lost, including Kitteh. However, I’ve been listening to this shit since I was 10, so I was alright. Even if you didn’t get their set so much, you could still appreciate the performance, as it was absolutely blinding. Their skill as musicians was certainly showcased well as the band swapped around for the encore with Dan on guitar and Matt on drums, and he certainly mixed up his vocals gloriously throughout the rest of the show, displaying that yes, Alkaline Trio aren’t just revered for their dark, tongue in cheek lyrics. Even though there was plenty of that on show with ‘Mr Chainsaw’ and my own personal favourite, ‘This Could Be Love’. The crowd were possibly not as responsive as the band would have liked, as they cracked jokes and tried to get a bit more of a reaction. However, we were the first show on the tour, so the band could possibly have been testing the waters. Whatever it was, it didn’t work and sadly, a lot of the people around me were not having as good as time as they should have been. I don’t attribute this to the band, but to the twelve year old dickheads who didn’t know what the fuck to do. That said, the Trio could have picked a better set list with a few more of the singles. It was actually a reasonably low-key set, as they played a lot of their more mellow material. There was something for everyone though in their 90 minute set, as they finished on classic ‘Radio’. They might have been better off ending on a slightly more high-energy song, but it kept the fans happy and I was definitely surprised and delighted to see it played. It’s plain to see that Alkaline Trio are still kicking and have bounced back spectacularly with latest album, ‘This Addiction’. Here’s hoping that next time they return, we’re all a bit better prepared.