6 Canadian albums that changed Pop Punk music forever.
Mar 16, 2017 14:57:40 GMT
Bootylicious Batch, Devilfish, and 5 more like this
Post by Gabo on Mar 16, 2017 14:57:40 GMT
Pop punk wouldn't be the same without Propagandhi, Sum 41, Gob and... Avril Lavigne?
Canada often gets ignored for its contributions to the world of hook-laden, melodic punk rock due to the sheer mass of bands that have come out of the U.S., but in the 1990s and early 2000s, we exported a staggering amount of great pop punk records, and had a surprisingly large hand in shaping the genre’s rise to its eventually exhausting ubiquity on the radio and in TV and movies (sorry…).
While we’re still dwarfed by our neighbours to the south in terms of pop punk legends, the influence of these albums is still extremely palpable and prescient even today.
Here are some of the best Canadian pop punk records that not only helped define the genre, but Canada’s musical landscape as well. While Canada has been responsible for a wealth of great pop punk records, these are the ones that not only stand the test of time, but the ones you can plainly see have had an enormous impact on the evolution of the genre.
Avril Lavigne – Let Go
While it may seem out of touch or even completely unnecessary to include Avril Lavigne’s debut album here, it’s undeniable that this brought pop punk firmly into the mainstream, blurring the lines with it and straight-up pop music, and making it more of a cultural movement than a genre. It also laid some of the very important groundwork that paved the way for the success of female fronted pop punk bands in the mainstream, moving away from the “sweet and quiet” singer songwriter trope, resulting in the rise of female-driven punk-influenced pop music, with the later success of Canadian artists like FeFe Dobson, and Skye Sweetnam being a direct result.
This is an album that is, to say the least, divisive. It’s celebrated as a highly successful album, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of “pop punk purists” argue that it’s not really a pop punk album. Why? Because it features more down-tempo ballads as well as the straight ahead bangers? Well, yeah, so do a bunch of pop punk records – Sum 41’s “In Too Deep” is hardly vicious. Because it’s “mainstream” and made by a “sellout”? First of all, hard to sell out on your debut album, and furthermore, what was she selling out from? The rampant dick and fart jokes, stories about drinking, lamenting not getting girls, and shitty, entitled adolescent teenage boy attitudes found in a majority of pop punk at the time? They’re hardly arguments worth taking seriously.
When this album came out, it got a lot of flak, and it all seems rather like nonsense as the years go by. You know what this album’s crime was? It put a girl front and centre in a genre that still has a problem with female representation, and it was successful as hell. I’d chalk a lot of the initial hate for Avril’s first album up to jealousy from little punk boys who were pissed that a girl doing what they were doing was so much more successful. You can blame the “machine” and the “industry” all you like, but it’s not like other pop punk bands weren’t industry manufactured or groomed. What is undeniable is that this album was a huge influence on young girls; girls who finally saw someone they could identify with in this kind of music. These were girls who weren’t yet old enough, or maybe experienced enough with alternative music to go digging for the wealth of great female punk bands in Canada that the mainstream was ignoring.
Regardless of her career post-Let Go, this is an album that still holds up in a big way. I listened to this not too long ago on a CD in my friend’s kitchen, and we were both blown away by how catchy it still is, and how much better it holds up than something in a similar league, like Simple Plan’s 2002 debut, or anything Good Charlotte has ever done. As far as the mainstream capitalizing on the pop punk trend goes, this album does everything right, and manages – with the exception of a few missteps – to stay pretty timeless.
www.aux.tv/2016/12/cancon-poppunk/
Canada often gets ignored for its contributions to the world of hook-laden, melodic punk rock due to the sheer mass of bands that have come out of the U.S., but in the 1990s and early 2000s, we exported a staggering amount of great pop punk records, and had a surprisingly large hand in shaping the genre’s rise to its eventually exhausting ubiquity on the radio and in TV and movies (sorry…).
While we’re still dwarfed by our neighbours to the south in terms of pop punk legends, the influence of these albums is still extremely palpable and prescient even today.
Here are some of the best Canadian pop punk records that not only helped define the genre, but Canada’s musical landscape as well. While Canada has been responsible for a wealth of great pop punk records, these are the ones that not only stand the test of time, but the ones you can plainly see have had an enormous impact on the evolution of the genre.
Avril Lavigne – Let Go
While it may seem out of touch or even completely unnecessary to include Avril Lavigne’s debut album here, it’s undeniable that this brought pop punk firmly into the mainstream, blurring the lines with it and straight-up pop music, and making it more of a cultural movement than a genre. It also laid some of the very important groundwork that paved the way for the success of female fronted pop punk bands in the mainstream, moving away from the “sweet and quiet” singer songwriter trope, resulting in the rise of female-driven punk-influenced pop music, with the later success of Canadian artists like FeFe Dobson, and Skye Sweetnam being a direct result.
This is an album that is, to say the least, divisive. It’s celebrated as a highly successful album, don’t get me wrong, but a lot of “pop punk purists” argue that it’s not really a pop punk album. Why? Because it features more down-tempo ballads as well as the straight ahead bangers? Well, yeah, so do a bunch of pop punk records – Sum 41’s “In Too Deep” is hardly vicious. Because it’s “mainstream” and made by a “sellout”? First of all, hard to sell out on your debut album, and furthermore, what was she selling out from? The rampant dick and fart jokes, stories about drinking, lamenting not getting girls, and shitty, entitled adolescent teenage boy attitudes found in a majority of pop punk at the time? They’re hardly arguments worth taking seriously.
When this album came out, it got a lot of flak, and it all seems rather like nonsense as the years go by. You know what this album’s crime was? It put a girl front and centre in a genre that still has a problem with female representation, and it was successful as hell. I’d chalk a lot of the initial hate for Avril’s first album up to jealousy from little punk boys who were pissed that a girl doing what they were doing was so much more successful. You can blame the “machine” and the “industry” all you like, but it’s not like other pop punk bands weren’t industry manufactured or groomed. What is undeniable is that this album was a huge influence on young girls; girls who finally saw someone they could identify with in this kind of music. These were girls who weren’t yet old enough, or maybe experienced enough with alternative music to go digging for the wealth of great female punk bands in Canada that the mainstream was ignoring.
Regardless of her career post-Let Go, this is an album that still holds up in a big way. I listened to this not too long ago on a CD in my friend’s kitchen, and we were both blown away by how catchy it still is, and how much better it holds up than something in a similar league, like Simple Plan’s 2002 debut, or anything Good Charlotte has ever done. As far as the mainstream capitalizing on the pop punk trend goes, this album does everything right, and manages – with the exception of a few missteps – to stay pretty timeless.
www.aux.tv/2016/12/cancon-poppunk/
it's hard to find something like this nowadays!
