Introduction

When talking about punk nowadays, the first bands that people tend to think about are the likes of Green Day and Sum 41. The music industry, however, has very specific tags to separate genres; this often seems pedantic, but without this practice labeling genres can become very confusing. The Doobie Brothers and Foo Fighters are both technically rock bands, but that’s not really helpful information if you’re trying to find music similar to one artist or the other. So while you might get annoyed when someone (i.e. me) tells you that “true” punk music is primarily limited to the seventies, it’s not to say that more recent punk bands are inferior. Rather, the genre subtly shifted into something that needs to be classified differently. These subtle shifts are the cornerstone of music evolution and understanding how these shifts happen is, in my opinion, a key to discovering music outside of a time period with which you are more familiar.

Part 1: The Rise of Punk

All music can be traced back nearly indefinitely, so it’s necessary to pick somewhere to start. I think it’s to begin with The Velvet Underground as they are sufficiently different from their contemporaries. It’s important to note that VU is decidedly not a punk band—psychedelic rock fits their style and the time period better—but they certainly had an undeniable impact on the genre. Their 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico, came out the same year as the guitar masterworks Disraeli Gears by Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s self titled and the sprawling Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, and as such was completely different from what audiences were used to hearing. Featuring controversial lyrics and spartan instrumentation, as well as spurning popular trends, it’s easy to see how the band laid the groundwork for what would become punk.

The Stooges were among the first bands to take note of VU’s style, as is clearly evident when listening to one of their first singles “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” While they had other influences (many British Invasion bands come to mind) the hypnotic riffs, heavy distortion, sexual subject matter, and open references to drugs and alcohol are all hallmarks of the Velvet Underground’s influence. While they are still classified as “proto-punk,” The Stooges are much more obviously related to later punk acts and were among the most successful of those who preceded the genre.

In the early seventies, the punk thread was largely relegated to garage rock bands who played in clubs but didn’t break out. Among them were Velvet Underground devotees The Modern Lovers, who even had VU bassist John Cale produce some of the tracks on their debut (I mention them first since, although this album was released in 1976 with many others on the list, the demos were recorded in 1973). As the decade went on the movement began to pick up steam, with Television, Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie (who was, at one point, not a pure pop group) and Talking Heads all gaining recognition at the same club, CBGB, in New York. These bands formed the first wave of proper punk, along with U.K. bands The Sex Pistols and The Clash. There are, of course, countless others, but these are the ones that were most influential and remain the most acclaimed.

So what do these bands do differently than those that came before them? For one, the harsh distortion is scaled back a bit, but the simplistic chord structure remains. In turn, the vocals are often more outlandish and commonly more spoken than sung. Additionally, the bands are usually more single minded—there’s nothing on Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols that resembles the delicate “Sunday Morning” by The Velvet Underground, for example. By modern standards it may not seem so, especially when framed against the speed metal of the eighties, but for the time the speed the bands played at was notable and indicative of the incredible energy the acts would present on stage.

Patti Smith’s Horses, the first album to come out of the New York club scene, is something of an exception, though, featuring legitimately talented singing and actual varied instrumentation instead of banging away like madmen for forty minutes. Still, “Gloria” is undoubtedly a punk rock hit. Ramones and Blondie were soon to follow with their eponymous debuts, with Ramones spawning one of the genre’s most recognizable singles in “Blitzkrieg Bop.”

Punk reached its height in 1977 with The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Talking Heads, and Television releasing their debuts and Ramones releasing their second album. Other notable acts also released albums this year, including Suicide, who blended punk rock with the emerging electronic scene, and Richard Hell & The Voidoids, yet another veteran of CBGB. The U.K. representatives were especially furious, sporting anti-establishment lyrics, yelling in place of singing, and adrenaline fueled tempos.

The year was also the beginning of the decline of the genre which, like too many of the bands, suffered from an explosive rise to popularity followed by sudden disappearance. Television and Talking Heads showed the desire to move beyond the simplistic roots of punk rock. “Psycho Killer,” while featuring the provocative lyrics and stripped down instrumentation characteristic of the genre is much more tame than one would expect. Television seemed to have already bored of traditional punk, with Marquee Moon composed of songs featuring complex structures instead of the typical three chord formula that dominated most bands. In particular, the epic title track is among the first songs that could really be considered “post-punk.”

Before we can talk about post-punk, though, we have to talk about punk’s greatest album and last hurrah, London Calling by The Clash. Normally, I’m pretty careful about declaring an album best of anything, but with this album it’s a no-brainer. Without ever straying too far from their punk rock roots, The Clash manage to blend in reggae, blues, surf rock, country-western and more into a single cohesive album. It also produced the title track “London Calling,” a punk rock song as pure as they come complete with aggressive instrumentation and apocalyptic lyrics.

Part 2: What Came After

The end of classic punk rock came about abruptly as The Sex Pistols announced their breakup and Blondie, The Clash and Ramones moved in a more commercial direction. At this point, the scene split, with two major styles emerging. Some embraced the abrasive punk attitude and made increasingly hardcore music in a genre dubbed anarcho-punk. Of these, Black Flag and Dead Kennedys were among the most successful. These bands also kept the anti-establishment themes for which punk rock bands had become known. For example, Dead Kennedys’ “Holiday in Cambodia” criticizes upper class Americans who claim to understand the struggles of the poor. On the other side were those of the post-punk and new wave movements, which were more experimental with their sound and earned a reputation as the “artsy” side of punk rock. While initially similar, the two eventually diverged with new wave incorporating synth and electronic elements usually associated with pop music. By 1980, Talking Heads had already considerably developed their new sound with their album Remain In Light. Notice just how different “Once In a Lifetime” sounds from “Holiday in Cambodia,” despite the two bands coming from the same background and the songs being released the same year.

The thread I think is most interesting to follow is that of post-punk, of which the seminal album was Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures released in 1979. It was not the first album of the genre–Gang of Four saw critical and commercial success with 1978’s Entertainment!–but what sets this album apart is the unusual production that creates a dark, spacious atmosphere using a variety of delays, echos and various other sounds. Instrumentally, the two albums are similar, but the creativity of the production on Unknown Pleasures allowed Joy Division to exert far more influence on the genre despite releasing only one more album before the death of singer Ian Curtis. One of the other major early post-punk acts, The Cure, closely resembles Joy Division on their breakout album Pornography with the same brooding aesthetic.

Still, the post-punk movement proved to be short lived. Joy Division reformed under the name New Order, but moved towards the more commercially viable New Wave sound with The Cure following suit after the critical panning of Pornography (which, retrospectively, has been claimed one of the bands best albums). By the mid-80’s, emerging bands claiming punk and post-punk such as The Smiths sound only tangentially related. Most bands following in the tradition of punk during this time period had significantly mellowed out the sound forming what came to be called alternative rock. Alternative became a broad term that described many acts in the late 80’s and early 90’s, from the college rock of R.E.M. to the grunge of Nirvana to the indie rock of Pavement.

Part 3: Revival Period

The mid-90’s saw a revival of the genre, as major labels signed bands such as Green Day and Bad Religion in 1994, and The Offspring in 1996. These bands had been releasing music on independent labels for some time, with Bad Religion’s first album coming out in 1983. However, the increased exposure from being signed helped them see success, with Green Day’s Dookie becoming an unexpected smash hit. Although they wouldn’t be signed for a couple more years, The Offspring’s 1994 effort Smash became the best selling independent album in history at the time. Punk rock saw a massive surge in interest almost directly as a result of the success of these two albums.

As the decade went on, the genre became more radio friendly focusing on catchy riffs and lyrics in a style that came to be known as pop punk. This term encompasses bands such as blink-182, Sum 41, and Jimmy Eat World. The popularity of the genre peaked at the turn of the millennium with blink-182’s Enema of the State being a landmark of the genre. While other acts began to enter the mainstream such as Good Charlotte and Avril Lavigne, outside of blink-182 and Green Day most had only brief success and by the mid-2000’s pop punk had largely been replaced by emo pop.

In 2004, in the twilight of the genre, Green Day released one of the most critically acclaimed albums of pop punk in American Idiot. After several unsuccessful releases, the album reinvigorated Green Day’s career with five singles and even earning a Grammy. A rock opera in the vein of The Who’s works, the album explores political and economic themes and incorporates a wide breadth of influences and instruments unusual for punk.

The last movement of note was the post-punk or garage rock revival, which occurred separately from the punk rock revival in the early 2000’s. The first major band of the revival was The Strokes, who exploded onto the scene with the enormous success of their debut Is This It. Citing Velvet Underground as their main influence, Is This It features a stripped down sound with few production tricks and the same lyrical themes as can be found on Velvet Underground and Nico. Somewhat humorously, when critics pointed out similarities between Television and The Strokes, the latter claimed to have never heard of the former. Despite their claims to the contrary, though, the garage rock influence on their music is unmistakable.

Although The Strokes were the first, many other successful indie rock bands of the early 2000’s trace their roots to the post-punk revival. This is true of none more so than Interpol, who received harsh criticism for their extreme similarities to Joy Division despite otherwise widespread acclaim for their 2002 debut Turn On the Bright Lights. The National, who did not come to prominence until 2007 with the album Boxer (although their previous effort also earned praise from critics), actually released their first album in 2001 and got their start playing alongside The Strokes and Interpol in New York clubs.

Conclusion

After around 2005, punk influence became less of a dominant force and instead was just one of many among a blend of styles. The number of bands who could be considered garage rock or post-punk by way of The Strokes is innumerable and includes bands such as Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The Killers and more. There are also many bands that I just couldn’t include for the sake of space. The White Stripes, contemporaries of The Strokes, gained fame through their fusion of garage rock and blues rock sounds, and paved the way for groups such as The Black Keys. Like Interpol, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs leaned more towards the post-punk side than the garage rock side but were still significant in the movement. Similarly, Green Day found their influence decaying at the same time. Later bands in the punk rock revival such as Yellowcard found a more commercially appealing sound by blending in alternative styles and many acts such as My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Fall Out Boy finding success by incorporating emo elements.

There are also many derivatives of punk that I neglected for the sake of focusing on the more popular ones. I briefly mentioned how Black Flag was hugely influential on the hardcore punk genre. There are also subgenres that focus on electronic sounds and movements that focused on all-girl or all-LGBT bands. Tracing a genre through decades is a difficult task that requires some generalizations, but now when you hear that The Velvet Underground is a major influence on today’s music I hope this list helps to make clear why that is.