Punk Pop

Punk pop is the very essence of rock 'n' roll — the enemy of the chart phony, the champion of the snarling underdog, the heroic gatecrasher of the lifeless party. When you want to get loaded on fury and rip it up to a swaggering melody, cue up our punk pop masters Green Day, Simple Plan, and Sum 41.

Bristling with the energy of werewolves while harnessed to the harmonies of angels, our punk popsters are an irresistible force. They leave you no choice: pogo up and down to Good Charlotte and then contort your body to Patti Smith's "My Generation."

The choicest of our punk pop cuts will have you trashing your own sofa and gobbing on your own shoes before you know what's hit you. The peerless New York Dolls let rip with "Jet Boy", Gay Dad turn up their turbo-booster on "To Earth With Love", and Bowling for Soup gives us the lowdown with "Punk Rock 101." Messy.

Punk pop happened when the stalwarts of the pure punk movement started invading mainstream-chart territory: their tuneful disguise hauled the punk ethos out of the underground, and spread it through suburbia like a livid rash. From Blondie ("Hanging on the Telephone") and Siouxsie and the Banshees ("Hong Kong Garden") to the Queers ("Punk Rock Girls") and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs ("Maps"), punk pop takes great tunes and shoves them in the faces of the uninspired.