For decades, punk songs have been making us feel good and challenging us. They give us camaraderie in both our ambivalence AND our frustrations. (Healthy balance is important.)
Many of the world’s most famous punk songs are just for fun. But it’s also important to remember that this stuff doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Some real feelings and messages are behind these songs, and that sometimes can lead to controversy.
Let’s sit with that for a few minutes and talk about some of the biggest punk songs that got popular despite their contentions.
“American Idiot” by Green Day
Man, can I be honest? I did not get into the American Idiot album. I’m not knocking it, but as someone who’d grown up on Insomniac and Nimrod-era Green Day, I had a tough time appreciating this one.
That title track, though, dude, the conservative Bush-Dubbya-Republicans HATED that song. One thing I can appreciate is that it sparked a whole new wave of teenage rebellion among younger fans, leading them to seek a more socially conscious existence than their families were encouraging.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and my own 13-year-old daughter is a big fan of the album. I couldn’t be prouder.
NOFX’s entire ‘War on Errorism’ album
While we’re on the topic of early 2000s political punk, NOFX’s entire War on Errorism album was pretty controversial. But not entirely for the same reasons.
Yes, songs like “Idiots Are Taking Over” and “Franco Un-American” ticked off conservatives. NOFX was always unapologetically abrasive. So, their turn into more political fare was a real sucker punch for lots of people who were surprised to hear them on mainstream radio.
But then, you had the punks who seemed to completely miss their The Decline EP from 1999 and were mad at them for going political. Where the hell had they been all this time?
None of the complaints on either side mattered. The kids f***ing loved it, and The War on Errorism is still one of NOFX’s biggest albums of all time.
“Adam’s Song” by Blink-182
When Blink-182 released Enema of the State in 1999, “Adam’s Song” was a real standout. This band had been writing songs about breakups and aliens. Now, here they were penning the most gut-wrenching punk ballads about depression and suicide anyone had ever heard.
The song was released as a single in 2000. That same year, it was found to have been set on repeat by a Columbine High School teenager who took his own life. He’s lost his best friend in the infamous shooting that took place at the school the previous year.
As you can imagine, this made the song profoundly controversial. It sparked a conversation about how music influences behavior. Some people argued that artists should be more mindful of their influence. Others advocated for allowing artists to create art without holding them to a standard of responsibility for the actions of others.
Regardless of the controversy, “Adam’s Song” remains one of Blink’s most beloved and admired songs. I’d even go so far as to say that there are countless Millennials out there, such as myself, who felt a little less lonely in their teenage depression thanks to the song.
“God Save The Queen” by Sex Pistols
Certainly, there is no escaping that punk was, in many ways, a direct response to cultural and political unrest in the late 1960s and 70s.
We are not gonna do a whole retracing lesson here. Suffice to say that one of the earliest examples of punk being controversial was the Sex Pistols’ aggressively anti-monarchy tune “God Save the Queen”.
The track was heavily censored in Britain, and numerous U.K. leaders condemned it. You should read this BBC article, which is all about the lore behind the song and the ramifications the Sex Pistols faced, to get a good grasp of the situation, because it was vast.
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