Music, in the past, has often spelled bad news to society at large. It can challenge norms and invoke a sense of hype in places that modern culture may be uncomfortable with, such as sex, sexuality, and drugs. Personally, when I think of punk music, I see a genre that stands to be individualistic, aggressive, and rebellious. Phrases such as ‘anti-establishment’ also come up. This notion comes from many aspects of punk subculture, including dress, music, performance, and my interpretations. Cohesive experience with punk is not something I possess. In addition, I have not listened to or seen many punk related videos. My lens is very fragile and is subject to change because I have only seen images relating to punk, which shapes nearly the whole …show more content…
As a whole, the song focuses on a rebel girl who enjoys enticing sex from others through her actions and appearance, similar to a prostitute. She is restless, cannot stand being in school or at home, and the authority figures are disappointed and chastise her. The first two lines of the song emphasize this. She also mentions in the 6th ‘stanza’ that the dreams of the other girl’s father fail to make her happy. This stresses a boredom with adult wishes and desires for younger people, restricting them and holding them down from play and expressing themselves. The youth have “teenage blues” and the singer encourages other women to have fun like …show more content…
No conditions apply- the women can be promiscuous and are not the humble girl next door trope. Instead, she is the sultry “fox”. Breaking gender and sexual norms and females dressing in a provocative or masculine manner are not uncommon in my perspective. They can engage in homosexual activities and rebel against authority simply because they want to. The singer is the “wild girl” who does what she pleases.
‘Cherry Bomb’ fits this framework for me, with its raspy, moan-like vocals and lyrics that imply erratic, casual, quite possibly homosexual, and unrestricted sexual activities. She mentions the older generation and her parents in a way that makes her sound unsatisfied and prone to misbehavior. The music itself is filled with vibrancy and youth. Rough messages towards authority and destroying perceptions of proper female behavior through sex feel like the overarching themes in not only this song but aspects found in the punk genre as a
Within this essay I will discuss Widdicombe and Wooffitt’s suggestions made within their book ‘The Language of Youth Subcultures’ regarding resistance and will use the subculture example of punks to portray a clear conclusion. This book is about how different identities, both social and personal are established, maintained and managed within their everyday language. Widdicombe and Wooffitt seem to narrow in specifically on youth subcultures, particularly interviews with punks. We will look carefully at the language used by them to construct their identities and why they ‘resist’ being seen of members when approached in interview situations.
Objectification of women and misogyny is a common trend in song lyrics, but it is often socially accepted and further perpetuated. Finding a song in which the roles are reversed and a woman depicts a man as a sex object is incredibly difficult because when women try to break norms in the music industry, they are often criticized. In “Blah Blah Blah” by Kesha, she reverses the typical gender roles in song lyrics by objectifying men. Kesha has her own struggles within the male-dominated music industry because her producer sexually abused her and trapped her into a record deal. However, Kesha lost her court case, which illuminates gender issues within the music industry and the larger society. In 2010 when Kesha’s songs were popular, people weren’t aware of her battle with her producer. Instead, her lyrics classified her as more of a party figure and people even saw her as “trashy.” This song
“We were just a couple of young punks.” SLC Punk is a incredibly well written, iconic film. SLC Punk is full of contradictions that all young minds have to face, the inevitability of conformity, and growing up in todays society. The films a journey starting out with a young punk kid doing everything possible to not fit in. At the end of the journey, you see a tale of life's highs, and lows, and just how difficult it is to be a punk, in Salt Lake City. The exellent narration, contradicitions of youth, and visual aspects, make this film an incredible view for anyone at any point in their lifes.
“To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom”.(Brainyquotes.com)
To exemplify, “[s]even of… 19 female performed songs [from 1958-2005] were about lost love, two were about strong love” (Pruitt, p. 18). Lyrics are traditionally limited for women in country music within the scope of how they affect men. However, male-fronted songs, while predominantly about heterosexual love, have a variety of topics available, such as “‘country life,’ … ‘aging,’ ‘fame,’ ‘family,’, ‘homesickness,’ ‘infidelity,’ ‘liquor’” (Pruitt, p. 17). Themes outside of love are uncommon for female country singers on the charts, though women are underrepresented on country music charts. In fact, until 1968, women were absent from the top five country charts (Pruitt,). Even though women have always taken part in country music, their role is depended upon
The American rock band Nirvana impacted American culture and society by paving the way for the punk rock subculture into mainstream corporate America. Punk rock music stems from the rock genre but has its own agenda. The crux of punk rock is that it is a movement of the counterculture against the norms of society. Punk rock in itself is made up of a subculture of people who rejected the tameness of rock and roll music during the 1970s. (Masar, 2006, p. 8). The music stresses anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian ideas in its lyrics as well as scorns political idealism in American society. Before Nirvana unintentionally made punk rock a multi-million dollar commercialized genre of music, underground rock paved the way for the punk rock genre by creating core values that punk rockers drew upon.
When the Punk Movement emerged in the mid-1970s in both the United States and United Kingdom, it spanned into such areas as fashion, music, as well as youth mentality and thus became its own type of subculture. However, this movement can also be considered a form of social deviance when viewed through the lens of Robert Merton’s theory of anomie. This deviance stems from the anti-social and anti-conventional nature of the movement’s members in response to lower and middle class socio-economic strain. Therefore, the Punk Movement can be categorized as a combination of two of Merton’s types of adaptation to strain, including retreatism and rebellion, due to the subculture’s rejection of capitalist values, withdrawal from the workforce and apathetic attitude.
Punk is written with a purpose. A message is behind every heartfelt yelp and strain of the vocal chords. Lyrically, it is about more than just a high school romance. It deals with real issues in an honest fashion. The punk movement began in England as a medium for overly zealous political patrons to preach their messages of anti-conformity and anti-government to the faithful gathered at their shows each night. In their first single, “God Save The Queen,” The Sex Pistols were telling the youth of England that the Queen was a fascist and inhuman. The Sex Pisto...
The Punk Rock movement of the 1980’s was an explosion of hybrid and eccentric beats and lyrics that caught everyone’s attention, especially the young adolescents of the time period. The movement of Punk Rock took a major role in shaping the culture in the 80’s. The template for the 1980’s Punk Rock emerged from its preceptor of the 70’s Punk Rock which emerged from London. It’s loud and reckless tunes, to some sounded like noise, but to others it imposed many political standings and raised discussions of controversial topics in its lyrics. From this movements figurative and literal expressions through its bold fashion and uncensored lyrics, it definitely made a stance in the history of music and the 20th century.
Seventies punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures. Inheriting the folk tradition of the protest song, rock music associated with political activism as well as changes in social attitudes to race, sex and drug use. This was often seen as an expression of youth revolt against adult consumerism an...
By the late ‘70s, punk had finished and become an amazing genre with a following triple the size from when it was just garage musicians. Becoming the solid musical force no one in that time saw coming. With this rise in popularity comes many sub-genres of punk. New musicians embraced the DIY movement and began to create their own individual scenes with specific sounds.
The song’s genre is pop, which appeals to young audiences (children to young adults) and is completely free of inappropriate language/swearing. It doesn’t contain any mature themes and the lyrics are simple and easy to understand. The song is most likely aimed at females because it tells them to be strong and uses similes such as ‘Now I’m floating like a butterfly,’ which is stereotypically a feminine animal. The singer, Katy Perry, is known to be a role model for many girls and the song in general sounds feminine with high notes and a catchy pop tune. However, different ages may think of the song differently.
Punk originated in England in the 70’s before being taken up internationally, Roy Shuker (1998, p52) says ‘... lower middle-class youth favoured later, found working and lower middle-class youth favoured heavy metal, punk and reggae…’, but why? This essay will discuss where punk came from, and what punk is as well as how it was represented during the time it was most popular, and how its changed over time or if it can actually be seen today. Is punk dead? As well as looking at these changes and detuning weather they were good or bad for the punk movement. To do this, it is need to look at the different aspects that made up the punk life style. What makes a punk a punk? Such as things like fashion and music, and how the rest of the society saw and treated punks. ‘The original message of punk was dissident, counter-cultural, disobedient and politically outspoken… The importance of punk “can be judged by the echoes heard in music…’ (Maria 2013)
However, the 1990’s saw a flare-up in the music press about a new group of female musicians: the angry women. This new developing genre, Riot Grrrl, created a platform for female artists to express anger through rock music, allowing them to assert their ideas of feminism and sexuality. The Riot Grrrl movement spawned ideals in music and in young-women politics that
During the mid 1950s, a genre called doo-wop, a type of R&B, became popular among urban, African American communities along with the young audience. The genre involved girl groups using close harmony singing my mainly young singers. Girl groups emerged to provide a voice for an audience who had often been left voiceless-- young women, particularly African American--in a male dominated industry. It is also important to note that during this time, the pharmaceutical advancement, contraceptives, in American society coincided with the rise of Second Wave Feminism revolving around women in the workplace and in the bedroom. For the first time, the girls had the choice of sex which gave them a chance to go against the societal norms.