Is post-punk even a real genre?
By the time the late 1970s rolled around, punk practically felt like a necessary evil. Even though rock was still going strong as one of the dominant forces in rock music, it was clear that the sounds of Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith were hitting the same way as they did a few years prior. Punk came in to blow everything else away… but where does post-punk fit within that conversation?
When looking at the sounds of post-punk acts like Joy Division, this clearly wasn’t the same kind of music that came from Sex Pistols and Ramones, right? This was far more clinical than usual, using the same rudimentary sounds of punk but with a heavy emphasis on emotion rather than lashing out in anger.
Then again, has there ever been a proper definition of what the genre is supposed to be? When going down the dreaded rabbit hole of genre labels, almost anything that came from the underground after the golden age of punk had been considered post-punk somehow. Although there were many bands following in the footsteps of Joy Division and Television, like Depeche Mode, other artists were using the sound more as an aesthetic.
While the genre still brandished guitars, it would be a stretch calling someone like Elvis Costello post-punk despite being born right in the thick of it. And what about new wave? If we’re counting all of the underground bands that came afterwards, do Blondie and Devo count as post-punk acts? Because if a song like ‘Whip It’ and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ exist in the same genre, then the qualifiers make no goddamn sense.
It wasn’t even limited to the new underground artists, either. Since most of the punk bands that hadn’t embarrassed themselves or broken up hadn’t gone anywhere, artists like The Clash were being commended for their trips into post-punk, toying with what could be done in the genre with albums like Combat Rock and Sandinista.
Then again, maybe that was the point of what post-punk was supposed to be. Instead of latching on to what the genre label was supposed to do, perhaps the mindset was about making something with a punk rock ethos rather than having to be tied to the common elements of what “genres” tell you to do.
If anything, post-punk may have been the first time where artists started to think about the death of genre labels. When looking at the sounds of every artist in the genre, the only common link that puts both of them together is the fact that there’s a guitar player in the band. Some may have added in different extensions like a synthesiser into the mix, but as long as it had a guitar and was a little bit quirky, it qualified as post-punk.
While most of the music industry is a fan of labels, the start of post-punk feels closer to the state of change that music is going through right now. There are still indie rock, pop, and rap that get labelled as such, but the most inventive artists today know how to take every genre they’ve ever listened to and put it in the context of what they want to do.
So, all told… is post-punk really a genre of music? Well, yes and no. It certainly was conducive to a musical movement of sorts. Still, the overarching label of post-punk feels more akin to where music would be going in the years following its inception. Is it punk or is it something else? The real answer: it just sounds good.
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