The term "post" doesn't just mean that it came after it chronologically, it also means that it functions as a reaction to punk. In a nutshell, post-punk takes the ideas and ideologies that drive punk music into being made, and says, "I see what you're saying there, but what if we frame it this way?" therefore it doesn't have to be a genre that is sonically unified, it just has to carry that image of discussion with punk music.
Well, it's been done - Tim Coffman apparently called Pablo Honey post-grunge in Alternative Press Magazine a couple of years ago. (Or maybe you already knew it'd been done and were bemoaning the fact.) I mean, it came out in 1993, while Cobain was still alive & kicking. "Post" nothing. Grr.
I personally disagree. as the video says you cant really describe what post punk is, so its not really bizarre at all. Calling radio head post grunge is weird tho i guess. what music fits what genre is actually subjective
That's how I've always taken it. Post meaning "following," or "as a result of," instead of simply "after." Like in post traumatic stress, or post partum.
Not really, both Punk and Post-Punk are incredibly broad. Quite a few straight Punk Rock bands started out sloppier than they ended out different, just listen to The Damned's debut and compare it to Machine Gun Etiquette, you can hear the progression there. Even the Ramones slowed down their machine gun steadiness to make room for a couple Hard Rock solos on Road to Ruin. I'd also say Buzzcocks were quite a bit more unique and melodic, even if they weren't "shreddy". Sure they weren't quite on the level of say a Ton Verlaine or D Boon or Robert Quine but they definitely were more musically inclined than the Sex Pistols were at least. And I don't think you have to be a master of the Blues and Jazz Fusion in order to "know how to play your instrument" And not all Post-Punk was like that. Some embraced the "sloppiness" (for lack of a better term) of Punk, Devo sure as hell could never muster up an album like Marquee Moon or Blank Generation no matter how hard they tried to. And bands like Wire opted to take a much more minimalist direction to Post-Punk. Plus the mainstream image of Punk is only really reflective of the 70s British Explosion. If you were to abide by saying "Punks can't play guitar" then you'd also be referring to bands like Strung Out, Lagwagon, Propagandhi, A Wilhelm Scream, Belvedere etc. who were all a lot more sympathetic to Iron Maiden and Megadeth riffs than many of their "contemporaries". You'd also be referring stuff like the Washington DC/Revolution Summer scene where Hardcore Punk bands slowed down in order to give more melodic substance (Embrace, Rites of Spring/One Last Wish, Beefeater, Dag Nasty, Shudder To Think etc.) as well as the subsequent bands that they influenced (Alkaline Trio, Hot Water Music, Leatherface, Turning Point, Planes Mistaken For Stars). You could also bring up some straight Hardcore Punk bands like Zero Boys or Adolescents S/T album who certainly weren't afraid of lead guitar and solos in the way that the Sex Pistols were. Hell we even got a guy like Olga from the Toy Dolls who transcribed Bach's Toccata in D Minor despite the Toy Dolls being a goofy comedic Pop Punk band, literal actual Neoclassical Pop Punk (it's why it's fun to show live performances of that one to Metalheads). And of course a lot more than that. Punk, just like Metal, and a lot of other genres have had a massive and long evolution that you couldn't really just distill by going all "Post-Punk is just if Punks knew how to play their instruments".
Joy division is a great example what post punk represents. Even before when joy division was called "Warsaw" you could see thay transformation from straight up punk into experimental slower punk with deeper meaning, but still the same core instruments
i think he meant temporal in the literal sense, being that post- anything means after. but youre totally right. i think post- music is just experimental
@@mikegim9954something can be after another thing while the other thing still exists. Sure, post punk started while punk was still a recent phenomena but post punk still takes after it.
@@mikegim9954 It does mean "after" chronologically, but in music genres, "post" means that it's derived from. It's another take of the genre, yet it's distinctive enough to be in its own category. You can't say that Mogwai is rock just because the genre they play is post-rock. They don't sound rock at all, but the genre is derived from rock.
I always kinda felt the same way about the “indie” genre, it’s incredibly hard to pin down the aesthetics of indie apart from it just not being an industry product which it actually ended up being in a lot of cases :/
It's not even an actual genre, which is the goofiest part of it all! You may find elements of psychedelic music, shoegaze, electronica or even punk or metal but "indie" just refers to the fact that it's not being distributed by bigger labels and it's made from some kind of bottom-up formation, y'know?
i think it definitely depends, but i feel like indie as i understand it refers to the alt rock and grunge inspired bands of the late 90s and early 00s i first heard called indie. modest mouse, white stripes, etc. it doesn't describe the music at all though i give you that.
Ya indie is a weird one because I feel like the most indie thing you can do as a band is not call yourself an indie band and call yourself something like anti folk or tender punk or something like that I guess it’s like emo in a way ware no emo band wants to be called emo
Indie is weird because I feel like it describes 2 different types of music depending on where you come from. In the UK where I live if you say indie most people will think of the likes of Arctic monkeys or libertines and the music that came out from that or even a lot of the britpop music of the 90s, whereas in the US indie seems to have a completely different, more underground meaning.
Describing Talking Heads as “sardinic Afro beats” is so contemptuous, lazy, inaccurate, and downright wrong that by necessity I had to disregard everything else you said.
There's a ton of post-punk bands that don't sound goth rock-y at all though.... The Pop Group or The Proletariat both come to mind. And then, even the goth rock bands all HATED whenever anyone called them "goth" (Sisters Of Mercy were so pissy about the goth label that they started wearing Hawaiian shirts on stage and shit lol) - Personally i dont care what we call it so long as the music is good, but post-punk seems a useful descriptor for finding bands i'll probably like.
Post-Punk is the darker version of New Wave. EDIT: Reply to some of the replies: I'm speaking in terms that were used in the 70's. No-Wave, Dark-Wave, Goth-Wave and others are more modern subcategories.
I personally love the name “Post-Punk.” It just feels right. Most of Joy Division’s songs sound like punk, but not quite. So I think post-punk is a good way to describe their music.
When I hear Post -Punk, I think of Gang of Four, Wire, The Fall, The Pop Group or Magazine. Bands that took the idea of punk then incorporated dub or poly rhythm or spoken word into their music. Post-rock and post -hardcore have similar aesthetics, taking the foundation and adding something else entirely to create a new sound.
This to me is the correct usage. Post Punk was really a UK term for bands like this. its bizarre to apply to the US when New Wave was actually taking place here!
@@boejudden9011 that may be true but i used dub as an example of a characteristic I look for when discussing post-punk. I didn't say who used it first, that wasn't my point.
@@diydylana3151 oh yes, I would say that many of those bands and subgenres have many common threads and over time they evolved their style/sound to make something new.
Oh dude, I've gone so deep into analyzing people's ridiculous genre names so much in my past. I've seen people stick by bad genre names and attack good genre names. It's wild.
The name is more of a description of music in the context of the time and place the term originated from. Post punk was used to describe the music that was being made by the punk scene of England after they moved on from punk. Which is why you have bands that are post-punk coming out seemingly right next to famous punk releases. These bands all existed in the same scenes and included a lot of the same musicians and core music values. So to put a complicated topic simply, it's post-punk because it's the music that the British punk scene were making after punk
Television isn’t even post punk, they’re Art Punk. Their early stuff with Richard Hell was definitely proto punk like early Patti Smith. But when Television changed their lineup in 1975 that’s when they became art punk.
Post-punk is a broad term, just as punk is, it wasn't meant to be super specific. It just refers to bands that took elements of punk (stripped back instrumentation, DIY aesthetic, anti-establishment, etc) while going beyond the confines of punk, combining other influences. It's music that undoubtedly shares the ethos of punk while not being able to be defined as "punk rock."
I think it's a different genre but I still call the old new wave, new wave. To me I sense it is something different musically but I can't put my finger on it.
Start complaining about post-rock, post-hardcore, post malone if you're pickin a fight with post-punk. Additionally, we have no standardization with genre naming. Never have. Never will. So all genre references are in the moment. The here and now. Think about Pop. Pop describes everything from Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga and shit like Megan Thee Stallion.
Don't forget the entire catalogue of western classical music, where the nomenclature is fully based around time periods. Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, etc.
Post-Hardcore does have the sane problem. Fugazi, Thursday, Silverstein, Dance Gavin Dance are all considered post-hardcore but do not sound alike at all.
The answer to the question you asked as to, "what to call these bands?" is obvious. They were NEW WAVE. Two of the three bands you mention (Talking Heads and Devo) self identified as New Wave bands. Heck Seymour Stein was the Talking Heads manager. And was the one who really promoted the Heads using that term. Devo was not only pre punk (they formed in 73) but they did not consider themselves punk. They got in a fistfight with the Deadboys over whether they were punk when they played CBGBs. That's why they used the term New Wave. I love this channel but you literally have never used the phrase "New Wave" in any form, ever on ANY of your videos As careful a music historian as you are, it's just bonkers to ignore this movement. . New Wave was a historical event. It was a super important musical movement with a bunch of bands (Throw in Blondie and B 52s as well) that really changed Modern Pop music. To me it's due for a cultural reevaluation just in the way Disco was reevaluated.
Nailed it. Back in the 80s you had punk, new wave and then goth. All this post punk is just a modern reimagining of genres to sub classify for no reason.
@@PuffinPass EXACTLY. I think critics always saw Punk as the more authentic "real" music and they were ecstatic when grunge came back and saw that as a validation that everything was punk. its actually kind of wild the way that whole movement/genre has almost no documentaries, histories etc. It's now this "Post Punk" bullshit.
I would generally class Talking Heads and Devo, Among others, As primarily New Wave, So that's fair, But would you call Joy Division or Siouxsie & The Banshees or Alternative T.V. "New Wave"? I probably wouldn't, Their sound is fairly distinct both from what I primarily think of when I think of New Wave, And with that of most other bands I'd call New Wave as well.
@@rateeightx The reason Television is mainly called New Wave now is because Hilley Krsytal said they were the start of New Wave. They never used that term. But Blondie, Devo and Talking Heads DID self identify as "New Wave" so my point is that its weird to just ignore what the bands themselves said they were. To me Post Punk is a distinctly English designation. I never heard anyone in America ever use in America to reference these bands because that first UK wave of Punk was radio airplay and club POISON. The main reason bands like the B 52s started saying, "We are New Wave" is because they didn't want to be labelled as Punk. On the other hand bands in UK WERE Post Punk because UK punk hit so much harder over there and bands like Joy Division were directly influenced by the Sex Pistols. So...this is a long of way of saying i think we agreee? LOL
Blondie wasn't really New Wave though. In fact, I hesitate to pigeonhole them into any one genre - they did punk, they did power pop, they did disco...
@@gabrielhicks8043 that he doesn't hate the genre, like how the music sounds, but rather what it's called. Pretty sure I said the exact same thing in my original comment lmao.
In case you don't know there's already another name for post-punk, it's called new-wave, but that term is usually used to categorize the more soft and poppy songs of the genre and because of that many people consider it to be a subgenre of post-punk even though many post-punk bands do/have new-wave songs, but anyway, in music "post" doesn't just mean "after", it can also mean experimenting on that style, there's a lot of music genres that include "post" on it, like post-rock, post-hardcore, post-grunge, post-metal, post-progressive and the list goes on...
I always hate it when someone’s like “I know it’s not common in Western Music but in World Music …” As a music student, I bump into other students saying this kinda stuff and part of me thinks “well done, you listened to non Western music and identified a characteristic.” But another part of me is aware this is the bare minimum and they haven’t even specified which culture, region, practice, genre or artist they found this characteristic in which just serves to keep the people listening trapped in a West centric mindset since they can not research this musical feature at all. Bad genre names can also be really bad for researching and exploring and it gets worse when hundreds of genres are grouped purely because they come from other parts of the world, that aren’t Europe or North America.
I was in a really shitty Community college class called “ world drumming “ ware I thought we were gonna learn about and play different drums from around the world but it turned out we were just learning to play drums from west Africa and we weren’t even gonna learn to play traditional west African music but some shitty new age classical peace his friend composed
@@theothertonydutch that’s a good point as well. I’ve seen celtic music and many other folk traditions in Northern Europe described as world music along with balkan dance music, like chalga, or more traditional balkan music, like noradna muzika and it just goes to show how narrow and west centric our culture is. We can’t even consider all European music Western and prefer to categorise some of it as “world music”. Not even all west European music is considered Western and some of it is just called world music by Western listeners. I’ve seen some call Flamenco “world sounding” which is so dumb and weird to me.
I've written entire articles about this, as a member of the music industry. You're correct about the "Post-Punk" term, but it's difficult to change the publics mind, when more accurately it should be "Punk-Post". I could give a proper reasoning, but nobody wants to read an 800 word article. When the 4AD Label became a leader with alternative choices in music, the big industry label's stuck them with "Inde" to represent "Independent Music", which was suppose to degrade the music it produced. If it wasn't for 4AD, we would have never got the; Cocteau Twins, Xmal Deutschland, Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance, Pixies, Colorbox, etc plus countless others. It's similar to when real-estate agents wanted to sound intellectual and describe 1950's track homes as "Mid-Century Modern" when, if fact, "track homes" are simply track homes ― If we're discussing Modernism ― Then we are talking about something completely different.
I prefer the term ‘Art-Punk’, as punk was an intellectual rejection of the musical norms, rather than just the modern stereotype of loud and fast guitars. I think Art-Punk captures well the same rejection of norms that the Talking Heads or Siouxsie and the Banshees shared with the Sex Pistols and Ramones, while recognising the different direction they took and the more artistic and experimental elements in it.
@@jasonremy1627 Absolutely not, but the Ramones were definitely Punk-Rock with the focus on energy and raw emotion. I get that Art-Rock sounds pretentious, but most of the bands making that kind of music were pretty pretentious like the Talking Heads, who were all art students.
The "post" prefix in art and music isn't really to do with time. It just takes some of the tropes of that genre and comments on them. That's what it means - a shame that you made a fantastic short with great info and graphics about a misunderstanding.
Thank you. I was looking for this comment. People in this thread dont realize they are arguing semantics, and not music 😂 The guy in the video literally said that Post-Punk is a broad sounding genre. THATS WHY THERE ARE SUBGENRES
Well I always thought post-punk refered to bands applying the punk language to more experimental scenarios, the punk drum beats are there, the bass, the simplistic guitar but exploring other moods rather than "I want to break everything and fuck the world up his ass". Fucking love post-punk
Bingo! That's how Joy Division, Black Midi, Talking Heads, and (early) The National are all in the same genre. Combining punk elements with different sounds and emotions.
genre names don't always have to be 100% accurate, they are sometimes quite arbitrary and inaccurate, but they still serve their purpose of labelling things. And when it comes to post-punk, I think the name instantly brings certain bands and sounds to mind..
When I was a teenager in the mid-eighties, we considered the bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Smiths, The Cure, Joy Division, The Birthday Party, Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, Tones on Tail, Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, The Cult, and The Mission all part of the Death Rock/Gothic Rock genre. no one was saying Post-Punk. Devo, B-52s, Talking Heads were New Wave but so were synth-pop acts like OMD, Human League, Howard Jones, and New Order.
Pere Ubu, who also began at exactly the same time as punk rock, are usually identified as "post-punk" yet they started at exactly the same time as the punk rock bands. The Residents, Half Japanese, Chrome, Cabaret Voltaire pre-date punk and other bands like Wire, The Fall, and The Wipers also started around the same time. Plus, bands like The Stranglers, with thier synths and keyboards and adventurous bass, and X-Ray Spex with thier saxophone, are always called "punk" and not post-punk. Even the Sex Pistols song Submission sounds more post-punk than punk, doesn't it? The idea of "post-punk" wasn't really meant to signify "after" punk or "later than" punk, as much as it was intended to mean "beyond" punk, or "more advanced than" punk rock, to explain that bands like Killing Joke, The Tubeway Army, and Mission of Burma have more advanced influences than the direct and straightforward approach of early punk bands like The Ramones,The Damned, The Dictators, The Heartbreakers, and The Saints. Still, when you go really to the beginning, you are correct, in that Television, Patti Smith Group, and Suicide were right there at the beginning of the Max's CBGB and Mercer Arts Center scene that happened with Ramones, Dead Boys, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Wayne County, etc. So, some people now prefer the term Art-Punk to describe the more poetic and artistic approach of the genre, when it is a bit more advanced than basic punk.
I kinda like the name 'Post Punk'. It implies a sort of fall-out period, where these groups are experimenting and trying to work out what alternative music ought to sound like in the following years. It's like a melting pot, from which several other genres are birthed or influenced. It feels eclectic and fuzzy, but that experimental attitude is a common through-line for most groups it encompases.
Post-punk is THE BEST genre name. It's not about the type of music, but rather the APPROACH to making it. And seeing it has an "undertow" kind of energy, it couldn't be better suited for a wide array of seemingly unrelated bands and styles. My problem with it is that people think post-punk = punk + tons of reverb.
The Talking Heads are punk. Souixie and the Banshees are punk. Television are punk. Hell, the Modern Lovers are punk. The Stooges are punk. The New York Dolls are punk. Devo? Nah. They hang out with Wall of Voodoo and the rest of the art school kids...
The Talking Heads met at an art school. But thank you, I thought I was alone in classifying them as punk. I’ll put my 2cents here. The video starts with too narrow a view of punk & lacks an understanding of what punk is. If you begin with a bad premise you are lost from the start.
@@_Pauper_ They are as punk as the Ramones, or Richard Hell and the Voidoids, or any of the other bands that arose from that mid to late 70s scene around clubs like CBGBs and the Mud Club. The idea that punk should sound like "punk" is antithetical to true punk ethos. It was a movement about destroying conformity. How did the same scene give us Crass and Joy Division? By simply being punk.
@_Pauper_ Ps. The art school comment wasn't meant as a zinger. Wall of Voodoo's cover of Ring of Fire is beyond epic. It's a great crime that they are considered one hit wonders. Listening to one of their albums from beginning to end is a lot like watching a David Lynch film.
@@DavidAlejandroYT Art pop doesn't mean "this piece of music is art", art pop is the bridge between conventional pop and experimental pop, pop music that isn't completely conventional but also isn't way too experimental that it can't be considered accessible or commercial. Bjork is a good example of this.
Yeah you nailed it. I truly think that caring about genre names is missing the point. Genre names from "blues" to "rock n roll" were invented by record labels to sell music and in the POST- record label world of today, they are more useless than ever. The name "post-punk" doesn't read to me as a misnomer but more like a statement. It's a testament to triumph of creativity that people had to move on from the horrible name of "punk" which was basically derogatory and not something any of them would self-identify as to everything beautiful and experimental that came after (POST) which was all so truly unclassifiable. We should celebrate the name "Post-punk" as a movement.
Post punk is what the modern day kids call it these days. We (GenXers, kids back in the '80s) called it new wave, punk or alternative back then. Which came out of punk. Learn the history, dude. Whats the point of this video?
i think its a really good thing that you cant pin down the exact sound of the genre. Its why its one of the best genre. Genres mean nothing anyway i personally like to listen to the genre called: Good Music.
Yeah! This always bothered me. I do think there is a relationship between the word "post" and what the genre fundamentally is, but trying to define it is difficult. Part of that difficulty is just how you define punk as well. For example, i don't think Television is Post Punk, but Punk. There is a blurry line of experimentalism that separates the two genres that is older than the terms themselves. A lot of proto punk bands would for sure fall under the post punk label of it existed then. Personally i see it all as part of the same reformation of rock that started with the Velvet Underground and similar bands, even if it split off into very different sounds. There is a similar ethos at the core of punk and post punk of rejecting tradition and conformity.
I’ve always sorted my music by genre and these are the things that have kept me up at night for the last 20 years. Where to put VU, where to put Sonic Youth, where to put Suicide…
@Boe Judden art rock, alt rock, and synth punk respectively (at least imo) Art rock because it's rock pushed to its limits, but not by combining classical/jazz like prog does. Alt rock because its sound is more varied than just pure "rock", but it still follows many of the same tropes Synth punk, because it's punk using synths. That's at least what I've gathered in my time listening.
Well, I love post-punk and its angry cousin No Wave. They went on pushing the punk ethos and exploring the edges of sound while punk turned away from experimentation.
In my opinion, the best way to categorize bands and albums is in the way wikipedia does it, with multiple genre listings, especially in the case of umbrella terms that aren't very useful, such as post-punk. Also, someone mentioned in the comments, a better umrella term for all these bands would be is 'art punk'. But let's say, we take Siouxsie and the Bashees as an example. You could very easily list them as art punk/gothic rock and it would describe their sound very effectively.
It's probably better to just retire the label and use more descriptive genres like New Wave, Gothic Rock, Dream Pop, Art Punk, etc. that more accurately describe the music and are usually included as secondary descriptors to the post-punk bands you mentioned anyways.
@@Ultamik3y New Wave has been descriptive the entire time. Look at French New Wave in cinema, it was an ushering in of entirely new thought to challenge convention. The American music scene called New Wave did the same.
I always hated labeling and categorizing bands. A good band will do what they do, but if they are labeled, it makes it hard for fans and the band, making them either stay in their little category or alienate the fans.
the most useless genre name, to me, is Krautrock. It can literally be just some random Psych Rock, or weird 20-minute ambient electronic compositions, or completely off-kilter avant garde pieces
Plus, there are a lot of more modern or non-German bands described as Krautrock (Stereolab, Circle, King Gizz, etc.) and usually it just means "sounds like Can". Fails as both a sonic or geographic descriptor.
Agreed and it always felt mildly bigoted to me like someone decided to categorize all German music together and give it a silly name to make fun of them it would be like if put all Japanese music together and called it rice rock it feels wrong
@@nikguimont8546 IIRC it was originally coined by the British music press, and there was sort of a general current within the German music scene to find sounds that were distinctly German (i.e. make some sort of rock music that wasn't just Erich Presley or Die Rolling Stones) without being distinctly German in ways traditionally associated with a certain Austrian art school reject. Granted that idea led to a wide variety of musical styles that didn't deserve to be slapped under one label: a similar desire to stake their own musical identity existed in France, Latin America, and other places but we don't talk of Baguette Bop or Taco Rock.
I'm so glad someone else feels the same way. I've come to love Can, but getting into other "krautrock" bands scares me because the genre has one of the most loose definitions I've ever heard. The "4/4 motorik beat" *maybe* started in krautrock, but it's extremely common all over rock now. "Avant-garde composition" can be anything from The Velvet Underground's Heroin to Pharaoh Sanders's The Creator Has a Master Plan to Swans' The Glowing Man. Plus, isn't "kraut" literally a slur for German people?
I think what you're overlooking its that it's not intended to relay that the bands in question are derivative of punk. But that they exist in the world "Post Punk". Its definitely a strange wording, but if you consider how impactful punk was you can see how these musical styles being embraced probably wouldn't have happened if punk hadn't disrupted the natural order to the extent it did. The term New Wave is more accurate imo, but that came to be defined in a particular way that isn't as broad as "post punk".
Music inspired by the punk movement that expands beyond punks limitations is post punk. Post rock is not rock, but people still call it that because it is expanding upon rocks limitations. Also Talking Heads is new wave.
I always preferred the term art punk because it not just a describes what it is better an more artful and experimental version of punk but also gives a fine line between it an new wave and also makes it so it includes heavier bands like half Japanese who were clearly part of the scene
I don't like adding "art" to the front of anything, because that clearly sets it up into opposition of punk at being not art. That's clearly wrongheaded.
@@jasonremy1627 I mean when people use art as a prefix it is usually expected to mean it is more experimental or uses the aesthetics of fine and or high art like there are movies called art films but that doesn’t mean not all movies are art it usually just means it is a experimental film and lady Gaga calls here music art pop but that doesn’t mean other pop music is lesser it just means she’s making aesthetic references to the world of modern art you don’t have to like these things but getting mad at the prefix art doesn’t make scene
I disagree on some parts. The name does carry an aesthetic with it. It was a bunch of art students and middle class workers, most of them were from the same mix of influences as the punk scene, a lot of them were there at cbgbs or when pistols formed, or at least inspired by the zeitgeist. And punk was a thing with the Stooges, so it's not like they appeared in a vaccum and were an amorphous blob. I do agree it is a generic term and a temporal one, but it's not like they didn't had their aestethic attached to it, even if it is the broad musical approach of those bands of this period of time. It's not like they don't have anything in common. Specially if we listen to the albuns year by year and we can hear the punk influence matured by 78. Even if they appeared basically by the same time (Siouxsie was part of the pistols gang), as time went on the external influences changed as well. The first Siousxie album is a different kind of punk. Same as The Cure. And they went to do "goth pop". I guess the issue is that post-punk feels more like an ethos to me than mere musical similarities. They all shared a similar approach when dealing with punk and other influences, and things evolved as they pursued their tastes as artists. If we had to change the term, the best we can call it is proto-indie, since they all came from local scenes, released albums with local record companies, formed their own labels...
Ah well it is what it is. Infact, postpunk often has more protopunk influences than punk itself. Postpunk is more punk than punk itself, but thats a hot take. I heard that the term "New musick" and "Positive punk" were terms used back then. Honestly I just became used to the term postpunk
It also led to other genres picking up the "post-" name, like whatever "post-grunge" is supposed to refer to (a lot of so-called "post-grunge" bands are just grunge that continued after April 1994).
post-rock is rock for nerds post-punk is punk for ppl who think theyre cool post-grunge is grunge but corny post-britpop is britpop but sadder post-bop is bebop for the excentric post-industrial is industrial but listenable hope i helped🤟
@Lucas F Based on what TABOM said: Post-hardcore's hardcore punk for people who think they're cool. Post-metal's metal for nerds. Obviously, it isn't all that true.
Some people define genre by musical and aesthetic style, others define it the same way artistic movements are defined, by the arc of creative evolution. I think that’s why there’s always disagreement.
@@SnailHatan That after the term post punk came to be there was an actual movement of punk that came to be hardcore which was actually TECHNICALLY post punk.
Singer-songwriter and spoken word can also meet that criticism. Most artists wrote their own music, meaning by definition most singers are songwriters, and the line between speaking and musical ideas lich sprechstimme, talking blues, and rapping is so blurry as to be nonexistent.
@@tjenadonn6158 rapping has a rhythm and spoken word not or am i wrong? also most singers do not write their own song, they perform songs written by other people. not that they dont exist, but they are much rarer then just singers.
I mean, garage music in my opinion is the best name for this type of music, because that also encompasses Proto punk, which goes back to 66 my friends. Hell, before that there was some howling wolf action, and peoples names that I don't even remember in the 50s, and this is the garage sound which has continued right up until today and the words rock 'n' roll do not cover it properly. It is its own thing punk was bold enough to create its own name but garage should've been there all along. Thanks for stopping by SORG's garage. May the super organism be with you?
What it was originally called New Wave. That way when you reference other similar genres like dark wave, cold wave and minimalist wave it all makes sense.
Post punk does mean something! It’s when people realized that the big corporations don’t care if you buy your guitars at a thrift shop and your album’s production budget is 8 dollars
Most Post Punk turned into Gothic Rock. Then branched out. Most bands at the time of the late 70’s and early 80’s didn’t really have a genre name . We use to call it Dark Wave . Then there was new wave , Art Rock like the Heads in the early 80’s -Bands like Joy Division which came from Punk when they were a band called Warsaw in 76-77. Siouxsee. The Cure, Bauhaus , Tones on Tail, Red Lorry-Yellow Lorry . Virgin Prunes, -British bands. Christian Death all led to bands in NYC like The New Creatures. Empire Hideous. Sunshine Blind Loretta’s Doll. Not to mention all the German Bands and English . Sisters of Mercy coined the Goth vernacular in 87 and from then onward it was and is called Gothic Rock
in germany we say „neue deutsche welle“ in english 'new german wave“ it has more indie but describes this music quite well, whereby this also describes a period of time
@@user-oz2jy6vm6m true but due to the nature you can't dispute the validity of a genre, whether you like it or not there are a selection of bands that have been put within the post-punk label and you can't really "undo" that, you can disagree but it's impossible to remove a genre/label once it has been used by a few people
There is an interesting discussion here, but to be honest, I have covid and prone to misinterpreting things. I should probably step away from the internet haha - will come back to this discussion when life makes more sense
I've read that post-rock doesn't really have a sound. It's only supposed to be using rock instruments for anything but rock music, or using it for different timbres and textures and stuff. It went downhill once the genre was assigned a sound when it is supposed to be a mere genre umbrella.
The term "post" doesn't just mean that it came after it chronologically, it also means that it functions as a reaction to punk. In a nutshell, post-punk takes the ideas and ideologies that drive punk music into being made, and says, "I see what you're saying there, but what if we frame it this way?" therefore it doesn't have to be a genre that is sonically unified, it just has to carry that image of discussion with punk music.
EXACTLY
the most accurate take in this comment section
this. so much this.
couldn't have said it better myself.
thank you.
Calling Talking Heads post-punk is as bizarre as calling Radiohead post-grunge.
Pablo Honey is Post-Grunge…
Well, it's been done - Tim Coffman apparently called Pablo Honey post-grunge in Alternative Press Magazine a couple of years ago. (Or maybe you already knew it'd been done and were bemoaning the fact.) I mean, it came out in 1993, while Cobain was still alive & kicking. "Post" nothing. Grr.
@@weebunny I know people that consider Nevermind a Post-Grunge album.
They were post punk tho….
I personally disagree. as the video says you cant really describe what post punk is, so its not really bizarre at all. Calling radio head post grunge is weird tho i guess. what music fits what genre is actually subjective
Never tell bro about Post-Rock and Post-Hardcore
fugazi and asking Alexandria being lumped together sure is something
Post-Metal, too
At least Post-Rock 1. Came after Rock and 2. Describes a branch of Rock. Neither of those are true for Post-Punk, unless you REALLY stretch #2
post rock is great
I mean, post hardcore does have another name used alongside it, but most people shun it
Post-Punk makes sense when looked at as an umbrella for music that was influenced by the punk movement but expanded out from its limitations
That's how I've always taken it. Post meaning "following," or "as a result of," instead of simply "after." Like in post traumatic stress, or post partum.
so many languages and you preferred to speak based
THANK YOU@@patriciokrateil3147
Thats......very accurate to me. This is the only explanation that makes any sense
All I know is that, when it's called "post-punk" I almost always love it!!!
Same.
Same! It’s one of my favourite genre and I still don’t understand what the hell is it
Sad lovers and giants have this really cool song called "lost in the moment" or something like that and "tightrope" 🤘🔥🔥
same.
this
Post-Punk is just Punk but they actually know how to play their instruments
Sometimes
Not really, both Punk and Post-Punk are incredibly broad. Quite a few straight Punk Rock bands started out sloppier than they ended out different, just listen to The Damned's debut and compare it to Machine Gun Etiquette, you can hear the progression there. Even the Ramones slowed down their machine gun steadiness to make room for a couple Hard Rock solos on Road to Ruin. I'd also say Buzzcocks were quite a bit more unique and melodic, even if they weren't "shreddy". Sure they weren't quite on the level of say a Ton Verlaine or D Boon or Robert Quine but they definitely were more musically inclined than the Sex Pistols were at least. And I don't think you have to be a master of the Blues and Jazz Fusion in order to "know how to play your instrument"
And not all Post-Punk was like that. Some embraced the "sloppiness" (for lack of a better term) of Punk, Devo sure as hell could never muster up an album like Marquee Moon or Blank Generation no matter how hard they tried to. And bands like Wire opted to take a much more minimalist direction to Post-Punk.
Plus the mainstream image of Punk is only really reflective of the 70s British Explosion. If you were to abide by saying "Punks can't play guitar" then you'd also be referring to bands like Strung Out, Lagwagon, Propagandhi, A Wilhelm Scream, Belvedere etc. who were all a lot more sympathetic to Iron Maiden and Megadeth riffs than many of their "contemporaries". You'd also be referring stuff like the Washington DC/Revolution Summer scene where Hardcore Punk bands slowed down in order to give more melodic substance (Embrace, Rites of Spring/One Last Wish, Beefeater, Dag Nasty, Shudder To Think etc.) as well as the subsequent bands that they influenced (Alkaline Trio, Hot Water Music, Leatherface, Turning Point, Planes Mistaken For Stars). You could also bring up some straight Hardcore Punk bands like Zero Boys or Adolescents S/T album who certainly weren't afraid of lead guitar and solos in the way that the Sex Pistols were. Hell we even got a guy like Olga from the Toy Dolls who transcribed Bach's Toccata in D Minor despite the Toy Dolls being a goofy comedic Pop Punk band, literal actual Neoclassical Pop Punk (it's why it's fun to show live performances of that one to Metalheads).
And of course a lot more than that. Punk, just like Metal, and a lot of other genres have had a massive and long evolution that you couldn't really just distill by going all "Post-Punk is just if Punks knew how to play their instruments".
You mean thrash metal? lol
Funny how post punk is nowhere near better than punk. Debunks that complexity mentality most rock fans have.
@@panamajack5972 Thrash Metal is just 80s hardcore, that can play their intruments
One of the best descriptions I heard was if punk is "f--k you", then post punk is "we are f--ked."
lmao
Simon Reynols
lol that is the best description I've ever heard!
Rage versus melancholy, the Punk Goth divide 💔
Joy division is a great example what post punk represents. Even before when joy division was called "Warsaw" you could see thay transformation from straight up punk into experimental slower punk with deeper meaning, but still the same core instruments
Joy Division are a punk as the Birthday Party. That is to say, punk as fuck.
That’s where the name for post punk probably came from
as a huge Devo fan, "whatever the hell Devo is" perfectly describes their sound
Synth punk
@@hmmmm44 maybe the first album
semi-ironic new wave
@@ek_films ik that's only part of it
rock music
The term "post" being strictly temporal is the funniest take I've heard today.
i think he meant temporal in the literal sense, being that post- anything means after. but youre totally right. i think post- music is just experimental
It's temporal by definition
can you elaborate on this? "post" means "after" according to the definition
@@mikegim9954something can be after another thing while the other thing still exists. Sure, post punk started while punk was still a recent phenomena but post punk still takes after it.
@@mikegim9954 It does mean "after" chronologically, but in music genres, "post" means that it's derived from. It's another take of the genre, yet it's distinctive enough to be in its own category. You can't say that Mogwai is rock just because the genre they play is post-rock. They don't sound rock at all, but the genre is derived from rock.
It called post punk because it comes from punk but had different aesthetic aims
Lmao the way he said ‘bollocks’ 😂
Innit.
Kid is still wet behind the ears.... prolly just started listening to punk and now he's an expert.🥴
Bullecks.... xD
*Bollix
Pretty ironic considering bullocks (at least in the UK) are defined by their lack of bollocks.
I always kinda felt the same way about the “indie” genre, it’s incredibly hard to pin down the aesthetics of indie apart from it just not being an industry product which it actually ended up being in a lot of cases :/
It's not even an actual genre, which is the goofiest part of it all! You may find elements of psychedelic music, shoegaze, electronica or even punk or metal but "indie" just refers to the fact that it's not being distributed by bigger labels and it's made from some kind of bottom-up formation, y'know?
i think it definitely depends, but i feel like indie as i understand it refers to the alt rock and grunge inspired bands of the late 90s and early 00s i first heard called indie. modest mouse, white stripes, etc. it doesn't describe the music at all though i give you that.
Ya indie is a weird one because I feel like the most indie thing you can do as a band is not call yourself an indie band and call yourself something like anti folk or tender punk or something like that I guess it’s like emo in a way ware no emo band wants to be called emo
Indie is weird because I feel like it describes 2 different types of music depending on where you come from. In the UK where I live if you say indie most people will think of the likes of Arctic monkeys or libertines and the music that came out from that or even a lot of the britpop music of the 90s, whereas in the US indie seems to have a completely different, more underground meaning.
I personally love it's versatility
IDK if you think of it as a mix between Post Modernism and Punk it fits pretty well
Clever!
Isnt Punk already post modernist though?
@@ghosteye131 then post-punk is post-postmodernist
How the hell does post-punk use elements of post modernism?
@@ghosteye131Definitely. Against the interest systems of the past and for nothing. Answering valid problems with meaningless noise and no solutions
Describing Talking Heads as “sardinic Afro beats” is so contemptuous, lazy, inaccurate, and downright wrong that by necessity I had to disregard everything else you said.
That's why the word "goth" exists
There's a ton of post-punk bands that don't sound goth rock-y at all though.... The Pop Group or The Proletariat both come to mind. And then, even the goth rock bands all HATED whenever anyone called them "goth" (Sisters Of Mercy were so pissy about the goth label that they started wearing Hawaiian shirts on stage and shit lol) - Personally i dont care what we call it so long as the music is good, but post-punk seems a useful descriptor for finding bands i'll probably like.
Now the term goth has been flanderized and only means black clothes, fishnets and doc martens
@@3van660sad world we live in now
Not all post punk is goth. Is LCD Soundsystem goth? What about DFA 1979?
Post-Punk is the darker version of New Wave.
EDIT: Reply to some of the replies: I'm speaking in terms that were used in the 70's. No-Wave, Dark-Wave, Goth-Wave and others are more modern subcategories.
Punkwave
Noir wave?
new wave is post punk
No wave is the darkest version of both
Are Killing Joke post punk?
Bro absolutely loathes “Post Malone” 😂
He’s probably like, where’s the original Malone??
I personally love the name “Post-Punk.” It just feels right. Most of Joy Division’s songs sound like punk, but not quite. So I think post-punk is a good way to describe their music.
When I hear Post -Punk, I think of Gang of Four, Wire, The Fall, The Pop Group or Magazine. Bands that took the idea of punk then incorporated dub or poly rhythm or spoken word into their music. Post-rock and post -hardcore have similar aesthetics, taking the foundation and adding something else entirely to create a new sound.
This to me is the correct usage. Post Punk was really a UK term for bands like this. its bizarre to apply to the US when New Wave was actually taking place here!
Post-metal
The Talking Heads incorporated Dub well before Wire…
@@boejudden9011 that may be true but i used dub as an example of a characteristic I look for when discussing post-punk. I didn't say who used it first, that wasn't my point.
@@diydylana3151 oh yes, I would say that many of those bands and subgenres have many common threads and over time they evolved their style/sound to make something new.
You hate the name yet it clearly helped you identify a collection of bands. And sounds. So I say it works.
maybe but i could also tell you that i categorize blue, red, and mauve as "huhikwaqa colors" and henceforth you could say those colors are huhikwaqa
@@cheeseofglass that would be very useful if we needed to refer to blue, red, and mauve frequently
totally agree
@@cheeseofglass we already do something quite similar, they're called "primary" colours. Hope this helped
Oh dude, I've gone so deep into analyzing people's ridiculous genre names so much in my past. I've seen people stick by bad genre names and attack good genre names. It's wild.
The name is more of a description of music in the context of the time and place the term originated from. Post punk was used to describe the music that was being made by the punk scene of England after they moved on from punk. Which is why you have bands that are post-punk coming out seemingly right next to famous punk releases. These bands all existed in the same scenes and included a lot of the same musicians and core music values.
So to put a complicated topic simply, it's post-punk because it's the music that the British punk scene were making after punk
Case in point: Television's wikipedia page, under "genres", lists them as both post-punk and proto-punk
Brian Eno's "Third Uncle" from 1974 is also proto-punk and post-punk
@@kelechi_77and pere ubu
Television isn’t even post punk, they’re Art Punk. Their early stuff with Richard Hell was definitely proto punk like early Patti Smith. But when Television changed their lineup in 1975 that’s when they became art punk.
Post-punk is a broad term, just as punk is, it wasn't meant to be super specific. It just refers to bands that took elements of punk (stripped back instrumentation, DIY aesthetic, anti-establishment, etc) while going beyond the confines of punk, combining other influences. It's music that undoubtedly shares the ethos of punk while not being able to be defined as "punk rock."
It suits me fine, a little pretentious but still my favourite genre. It bleeds into electro pop, dance, dub, new romantics, all good gravy.
Well, post punk came from punk and uses punk elements. It’s political and diverse
Back in the day, those bands were all referred to as "new wave", as I recall. I never heard the term "post-punk" well into the 90's or later even.
I think it's a different genre but I still call the old new wave, new wave. To me I sense it is something different musically but I can't put my finger on it.
Start complaining about post-rock, post-hardcore, post malone if you're pickin a fight with post-punk. Additionally, we have no standardization with genre naming. Never have. Never will. So all genre references are in the moment. The here and now. Think about Pop. Pop describes everything from Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra to Lady Gaga and shit like Megan Thee Stallion.
Don't forget the entire catalogue of western classical music, where the nomenclature is fully based around time periods. Renaissance, baroque, classical, romantic, etc.
Post-Hardcore does have the sane problem. Fugazi, Thursday, Silverstein, Dance Gavin Dance are all considered post-hardcore but do not sound alike at all.
@@dancegregorydance6933you could always just call silverstein and thursday emo if you really wanted to
The answer to the question you asked as to, "what to call these bands?" is obvious. They were NEW WAVE. Two of the three bands you mention (Talking Heads and Devo) self identified as New Wave bands. Heck Seymour Stein was the Talking Heads manager. And was the one who really promoted the Heads using that term. Devo was not only pre punk (they formed in 73) but they did not consider themselves punk. They got in a fistfight with the Deadboys over whether they were punk when they played CBGBs. That's why they used the term New Wave.
I love this channel but you literally have never used the phrase "New Wave" in any form, ever on ANY of your videos As careful a music historian as you are, it's just bonkers to ignore this movement. . New Wave was a historical event. It was a super important musical movement with a bunch of bands (Throw in Blondie and B 52s as well) that really changed Modern Pop music. To me it's due for a cultural reevaluation just in the way Disco was reevaluated.
Nailed it. Back in the 80s you had punk, new wave and then goth. All this post punk is just a modern reimagining of genres to sub classify for no reason.
@@PuffinPass EXACTLY. I think critics always saw Punk as the more authentic "real" music and they were ecstatic when grunge came back and saw that as a validation that everything was punk. its actually kind of wild the way that whole movement/genre has almost no documentaries, histories etc. It's now this "Post Punk" bullshit.
I would generally class Talking Heads and Devo, Among others, As primarily New Wave, So that's fair, But would you call Joy Division or Siouxsie & The Banshees or Alternative T.V. "New Wave"? I probably wouldn't, Their sound is fairly distinct both from what I primarily think of when I think of New Wave, And with that of most other bands I'd call New Wave as well.
@@rateeightx The reason Television is mainly called New Wave now is because Hilley Krsytal said they were the start of New Wave. They never used that term. But Blondie, Devo and Talking Heads DID self identify as "New Wave" so my point is that its weird to just ignore what the bands themselves said they were. To me Post Punk is a distinctly English designation. I never heard anyone in America ever use in America to reference these bands because that first UK wave of Punk was radio airplay and club POISON. The main reason bands like the B 52s started saying, "We are New Wave" is because they didn't want to be labelled as Punk. On the other hand bands in UK WERE Post Punk because UK punk hit so much harder over there and bands like Joy Division were directly influenced by the Sex Pistols. So...this is a long of way of saying i think we agreee? LOL
Blondie wasn't really New Wave though. In fact, I hesitate to pigeonhole them into any one genre - they did punk, they did power pop, they did disco...
So you don't hate post-punk, you hate what post-punk is called
"Post punk is a terrible genre name" is literally the first thing he says, what are you arguing here?
@@gabrielhicks8043 that he doesn't hate the genre, like how the music sounds, but rather what it's called. Pretty sure I said the exact same thing in my original comment lmao.
In case you don't know there's already another name for post-punk, it's called new-wave, but that term is usually used to categorize the more soft and poppy songs of the genre and because of that many people consider it to be a subgenre of post-punk even though many post-punk bands do/have new-wave songs, but anyway, in music "post" doesn't just mean "after", it can also mean experimenting on that style, there's a lot of music genres that include "post" on it, like post-rock, post-hardcore, post-grunge, post-metal, post-progressive and the list goes on...
I always hate it when someone’s like “I know it’s not common in Western Music but in World Music …” As a music student, I bump into other students saying this kinda stuff and part of me thinks “well done, you listened to non Western music and identified a characteristic.” But another part of me is aware this is the bare minimum and they haven’t even specified which culture, region, practice, genre or artist they found this characteristic in which just serves to keep the people listening trapped in a West centric mindset since they can not research this musical feature at all. Bad genre names can also be really bad for researching and exploring and it gets worse when hundreds of genres are grouped purely because they come from other parts of the world, that aren’t Europe or North America.
I was in a really shitty Community college class called “ world drumming “ ware I thought we were gonna learn about and play different drums from around the world but it turned out we were just learning to play drums from west Africa and we weren’t even gonna learn to play traditional west African music but some shitty new age classical peace his friend composed
"west centric mindset"? My brother in Christ, the music industry is west centric
Deutsche Schlager can be considered world music and it is basically the west european version of country.
@@theothertonydutch that’s a good point as well. I’ve seen celtic music and many other folk traditions in Northern Europe described as world music along with balkan dance music, like chalga, or more traditional balkan music, like noradna muzika and it just goes to show how narrow and west centric our culture is. We can’t even consider all European music Western and prefer to categorise some of it as “world music”. Not even all west European music is considered Western and some of it is just called world music by Western listeners. I’ve seen some call Flamenco “world sounding” which is so dumb and weird to me.
Meanwhile me who doesn’t even know how to find good Latino music: YES EXACTLY
Never mind the bullocks? 😆 Sandra won't be best pleased
His pronunciation of it is crazy
@@unitedmad9580 boolokes
@@unitedmad9580 His pronunciation of everything he fucking says is crazy
Shhh guys, don’t tell him about Russian post punk!
I've written entire articles about this, as a member of the music industry. You're correct about the "Post-Punk" term, but it's difficult to change the publics mind, when more accurately it should be "Punk-Post". I could give a proper reasoning, but nobody wants to read an 800 word article.
When the 4AD Label became a leader with alternative choices in music, the big industry label's stuck them with "Inde" to represent "Independent Music", which was suppose to degrade the music it produced. If it wasn't for 4AD, we would have never got the; Cocteau Twins, Xmal Deutschland, Bauhaus, Dead Can Dance, Pixies, Colorbox, etc plus countless others.
It's similar to when real-estate agents wanted to sound intellectual and describe 1950's track homes as "Mid-Century Modern" when, if fact, "track homes" are simply track homes ― If we're discussing Modernism ― Then we are talking about something completely different.
I prefer the term ‘Art-Punk’, as punk was an intellectual rejection of the musical norms, rather than just the modern stereotype of loud and fast guitars. I think Art-Punk captures well the same rejection of norms that the Talking Heads or Siouxsie and the Banshees shared with the Sex Pistols and Ramones, while recognising the different direction they took and the more artistic and experimental elements in it.
everything with the word art in it is bullshit
So, the Ramones music isn't art?
@@jasonremy1627 that's my point
I heard Siouxsie refer to the Banshees as "art pop" and I always rather liked that.
@@jasonremy1627 Absolutely not, but the Ramones were definitely Punk-Rock with the focus on energy and raw emotion. I get that Art-Rock sounds pretentious, but most of the bands making that kind of music were pretty pretentious like the Talking Heads, who were all art students.
The "post" prefix in art and music isn't really to do with time. It just takes some of the tropes of that genre and comments on them. That's what it means - a shame that you made a fantastic short with great info and graphics about a misunderstanding.
Thank you. I was looking for this comment. People in this thread dont realize they are arguing semantics, and not music 😂 The guy in the video literally said that Post-Punk is a broad sounding genre. THATS WHY THERE ARE SUBGENRES
reaction to a thing can only happen after said thing
I just call post punk "goth rock"
Well I always thought post-punk refered to bands applying the punk language to more experimental scenarios, the punk drum beats are there, the bass, the simplistic guitar but exploring other moods rather than "I want to break everything and fuck the world up his ass". Fucking love post-punk
Agree.
This is exactly what it is. It’s not saying bands that came after punk was dead. it’s bands that moved past fundamental punk.
Bingo! That's how Joy Division, Black Midi, Talking Heads, and (early) The National are all in the same genre. Combining punk elements with different sounds and emotions.
@@upthewolfs2347 black midi mentioned 😳
@@finnb-anarchy greep marvel cameo
You can't give it a name because it covers too many different aesthetics, by your own admission.
genre names don't always have to be 100% accurate, they are sometimes quite arbitrary and inaccurate, but they still serve their purpose of labelling things. And when it comes to post-punk, I think the name instantly brings certain bands and sounds to mind..
When I was a teenager in the mid-eighties, we considered the bands like Echo & the Bunnymen, Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Smiths, The Cure, Joy Division, The Birthday Party, Bauhaus, Love & Rockets, Tones on Tail, Christian Death, Sisters of Mercy, The Cult, and The Mission all part of the Death Rock/Gothic Rock genre. no one was saying Post-Punk. Devo, B-52s, Talking Heads were New Wave but so were synth-pop acts like OMD, Human League, Howard Jones, and New Order.
The only ones mentioned here I would consider are joy division, early Cure, and some Devo
@@rapdancesing Birthday Party is core post punk cannon.
@@hundredeyes8917 thanks for the heads up! Just listened to their first album and loved it
@@rapdancesing Bauhaus?
@@goat9629 yeah they’ve got a bit of everything but I would consider em goth rock b4 post-punk just my opinion
Pere Ubu, who also began at exactly the same time as punk rock, are usually identified as "post-punk" yet they started at exactly the same time as the punk rock bands. The Residents, Half Japanese, Chrome, Cabaret Voltaire pre-date punk and other bands like Wire, The Fall, and The Wipers also started around the same time. Plus, bands like The Stranglers, with thier synths and keyboards and adventurous bass, and X-Ray Spex with thier saxophone, are always called "punk" and not post-punk. Even the Sex Pistols song Submission sounds more post-punk than punk, doesn't it? The idea of "post-punk" wasn't really meant to signify "after" punk or "later than" punk, as much as it was intended to mean "beyond" punk, or "more advanced than" punk rock, to explain that bands like Killing Joke, The Tubeway Army, and Mission of Burma have more advanced influences than the direct and straightforward approach of early punk bands like The Ramones,The Damned, The Dictators, The Heartbreakers, and The Saints. Still, when you go really to the beginning, you are correct, in that Television, Patti Smith Group, and Suicide were right there at the beginning of the Max's CBGB and Mercer Arts Center scene that happened with Ramones, Dead Boys, Richard Hell & The Voidoids, Wayne County, etc. So, some people now prefer the term Art-Punk to describe the more poetic and artistic approach of the genre, when it is a bit more advanced than basic punk.
I kinda like the name 'Post Punk'. It implies a sort of fall-out period, where these groups are experimenting and trying to work out what alternative music ought to sound like in the following years. It's like a melting pot, from which several other genres are birthed or influenced. It feels eclectic and fuzzy, but that experimental attitude is a common through-line for most groups it encompases.
Post-punk is THE BEST genre name. It's not about the type of music, but rather the APPROACH to making it. And seeing it has an "undertow" kind of energy, it couldn't be better suited for a wide array of seemingly unrelated bands and styles. My problem with it is that people think post-punk = punk + tons of reverb.
Television was so good / ahead of their time that they pretty much single-handedly break the rock journalism narrative of prog->punk->post-punk
The Talking Heads are punk. Souixie and the Banshees are punk. Television are punk. Hell, the Modern Lovers are punk. The Stooges are punk. The New York Dolls are punk.
Devo? Nah. They hang out with Wall of Voodoo and the rest of the art school kids...
The Talking Heads met at an art school. But thank you, I thought I was alone in classifying them as punk. I’ll put my 2cents here. The video starts with too narrow a view of punk & lacks an understanding of what punk is. If you begin with a bad premise you are lost from the start.
@@_Pauper_ They are as punk as the Ramones, or Richard Hell and the Voidoids, or any of the other bands that arose from that mid to late 70s scene around clubs like CBGBs and the Mud Club. The idea that punk should sound like "punk" is antithetical to true punk ethos. It was a movement about destroying conformity. How did the same scene give us Crass and Joy Division? By simply being punk.
@_Pauper_ Ps. The art school comment wasn't meant as a zinger. Wall of Voodoo's cover of Ring of Fire is beyond epic. It's a great crime that they are considered one hit wonders. Listening to one of their albums from beginning to end is a lot like watching a David Lynch film.
Talking Heads met at art school. Daniel Ash of Bauhaus went to art school as wel
I love this term. Let’s talk about “art pop/art rock” and watch the RYM poindexters lose their minds
WHOA WHOA WHOA, YOU MEAN OTHER POP AND ROCK IS NOT ART!!!!??????
@@LuDux erm no, only radiohead and pop/rock made by people i like is art. also pop im too afraid to admit i like is art pop, it's avant-garde really
@@DavidAlejandroYT Art pop doesn't mean "this piece of music is art", art pop is the bridge between conventional pop and experimental pop, pop music that isn't completely conventional but also isn't way too experimental that it can't be considered accessible or commercial. Bjork is a good example of this.
@@kelechi_77 I can at least understand that definition, but I still don’t personally find it all that useful as a genre label.
@@DavidAlejandroYTPablo Honey, The Bends, Karma Police among others aren't art pop/rock
Always saw it as more a description rather than a genre
not a very apt one then
It’s both. And no issues with either.
Yeah you nailed it. I truly think that caring about genre names is missing the point. Genre names from "blues" to "rock n roll" were invented by record labels to sell music and in the POST- record label world of today, they are more useless than ever. The name "post-punk" doesn't read to me as a misnomer but more like a statement. It's a testament to triumph of creativity that people had to move on from the horrible name of "punk" which was basically derogatory and not something any of them would self-identify as to everything beautiful and experimental that came after (POST) which was all so truly unclassifiable. We should celebrate the name "Post-punk" as a movement.
more a "scene"
Post punk is what the modern day kids call it these days. We (GenXers, kids back in the '80s) called it new wave, punk or alternative back then. Which came out of punk. Learn the history, dude. Whats the point of this video?
Little Richard, Jerry Lewis, Buddy Holly and Patsy Cline is the first punk, beat out the Ramones by 19 years, kids.
i think its a really good thing that you cant pin down the exact sound of the genre. Its why its one of the best genre. Genres mean nothing anyway i personally like to listen to the genre called: Good Music.
I have same attitude towards biology, there's only two species: tasty and not tasty
Yeah that's what's punk about it
Yeah! This always bothered me. I do think there is a relationship between the word "post" and what the genre fundamentally is, but trying to define it is difficult. Part of that difficulty is just how you define punk as well. For example, i don't think Television is Post Punk, but Punk. There is a blurry line of experimentalism that separates the two genres that is older than the terms themselves. A lot of proto punk bands would for sure fall under the post punk label of it existed then. Personally i see it all as part of the same reformation of rock that started with the Velvet Underground and similar bands, even if it split off into very different sounds. There is a similar ethos at the core of punk and post punk of rejecting tradition and conformity.
I’ve always sorted my music by genre and these are the things that have kept me up at night for the last 20 years. Where to put VU, where to put Sonic Youth, where to put Suicide…
@Boe Judden art rock, alt rock, and synth punk respectively (at least imo)
Art rock because it's rock pushed to its limits, but not by combining classical/jazz like prog does.
Alt rock because its sound is more varied than just pure "rock", but it still follows many of the same tropes
Synth punk, because it's punk using synths.
That's at least what I've gathered in my time listening.
Well, I love post-punk and its angry cousin No Wave. They went on pushing the punk ethos and exploring the edges of sound while punk turned away from experimentation.
As you stated, post-punk cannot be renamed since it's composed of many different genres. New and exclusive genre categories would have to be formed.
In my opinion, the best way to categorize bands and albums is in the way wikipedia does it, with multiple genre listings, especially in the case of umbrella terms that aren't very useful, such as post-punk. Also, someone mentioned in the comments, a better umrella term for all these bands would be is 'art punk'. But let's say, we take Siouxsie and the Bashees as an example. You could very easily list them as art punk/gothic rock and it would describe their sound very effectively.
I don't think Art Punk would describe Siouxsie and the Banshees though, especially when you know that Crass were Art-Punk (and partial Post-Punk)
All genres are just pigeon holing.
Devo is Post-Punk.
I feel like new wave is the catch all and post punk is the gothy stuff.
Post-punk isn’t a genre. It never was. It was meant to describe artists INFLUENCED by punk, across various genres.
👏👏👏
exactly
It's probably better to just retire the label and use more descriptive genres like New Wave, Gothic Rock, Dream Pop, Art Punk, etc. that more accurately describe the music and are usually included as secondary descriptors to the post-punk bands you mentioned anyways.
why pigeonhole music in genres at all?
@@mj.l so you can more easily identify it and recommend it to others
Ain't no way you just called New Wave descriptive
@@Ultamik3y New Wave has been descriptive the entire time. Look at French New Wave in cinema, it was an ushering in of entirely new thought to challenge convention. The American music scene called New Wave did the same.
And New Wave Sci-Fi did for the genre
I don't think all people would agree to me but post-punk is so far my favorite genre of music
I always hated labeling and categorizing bands. A good band will do what they do, but if they are labeled, it makes it hard for fans and the band, making them either stay in their little category or alienate the fans.
the most useless genre name, to me, is Krautrock. It can literally be just some random Psych Rock, or weird 20-minute ambient electronic compositions, or completely off-kilter avant garde pieces
Anyone who puts Can, Faust, and Kraftwerk into the same category is absolutely barking.
Plus, there are a lot of more modern or non-German bands described as Krautrock (Stereolab, Circle, King Gizz, etc.) and usually it just means "sounds like Can". Fails as both a sonic or geographic descriptor.
Agreed and it always felt mildly bigoted to me like someone decided to categorize all German music together and give it a silly name to make fun of them it would be like if put all Japanese music together and called it rice rock it feels wrong
@@nikguimont8546 IIRC it was originally coined by the British music press, and there was sort of a general current within the German music scene to find sounds that were distinctly German (i.e. make some sort of rock music that wasn't just Erich Presley or Die Rolling Stones) without being distinctly German in ways traditionally associated with a certain Austrian art school reject. Granted that idea led to a wide variety of musical styles that didn't deserve to be slapped under one label: a similar desire to stake their own musical identity existed in France, Latin America, and other places but we don't talk of Baguette Bop or Taco Rock.
I'm so glad someone else feels the same way. I've come to love Can, but getting into other "krautrock" bands scares me because the genre has one of the most loose definitions I've ever heard. The "4/4 motorik beat" *maybe* started in krautrock, but it's extremely common all over rock now. "Avant-garde composition" can be anything from The Velvet Underground's Heroin to Pharaoh Sanders's The Creator Has a Master Plan to Swans' The Glowing Man. Plus, isn't "kraut" literally a slur for German people?
I think what you're overlooking its that it's not intended to relay that the bands in question are derivative of punk. But that they exist in the world "Post Punk". Its definitely a strange wording, but if you consider how impactful punk was you can see how these musical styles being embraced probably wouldn't have happened if punk hadn't disrupted the natural order to the extent it did. The term New Wave is more accurate imo, but that came to be defined in a particular way that isn't as broad as "post punk".
Music inspired by the punk movement that expands beyond punks limitations is post punk. Post rock is not rock, but people still call it that because it is expanding upon rocks limitations. Also Talking Heads is new wave.
this is the weirdest take I've heard in a while
I always preferred the term art punk because it not just a describes what it is better an more artful and experimental version of punk but also gives a fine line between it an new wave and also makes it so it includes heavier bands like half Japanese who were clearly part of the scene
Thats the one
I don't like adding "art" to the front of anything, because that clearly sets it up into opposition of punk at being not art. That's clearly wrongheaded.
@@jasonremy1627 I mean when people use art as a prefix it is usually expected to mean it is more experimental or uses the aesthetics of fine and or high art like there are movies called art films but that doesn’t mean not all movies are art it usually just means it is a experimental film and lady Gaga calls here music art pop but that doesn’t mean other pop music is lesser it just means she’s making aesthetic references to the world of modern art you don’t have to like these things but getting mad at the prefix art doesn’t make scene
I disagree on some parts. The name does carry an aesthetic with it. It was a bunch of art students and middle class workers, most of them were from the same mix of influences as the punk scene, a lot of them were there at cbgbs or when pistols formed, or at least inspired by the zeitgeist. And punk was a thing with the Stooges, so it's not like they appeared in a vaccum and were an amorphous blob.
I do agree it is a generic term and a temporal one, but it's not like they didn't had their aestethic attached to it, even if it is the broad musical approach of those bands of this period of time.
It's not like they don't have anything in common. Specially if we listen to the albuns year by year and we can hear the punk influence matured by 78.
Even if they appeared basically by the same time (Siouxsie was part of the pistols gang), as time went on the external influences changed as well. The first Siousxie album is a different kind of punk. Same as The Cure. And they went to do "goth pop".
I guess the issue is that post-punk feels more like an ethos to me than mere musical similarities. They all shared a similar approach when dealing with punk and other influences, and things evolved as they pursued their tastes as artists.
If we had to change the term, the best we can call it is proto-indie, since they all came from local scenes, released albums with local record companies, formed their own labels...
Post punk is punk with more skilled musicians from 1977 to 1983
Ah well it is what it is. Infact, postpunk often has more protopunk influences than punk itself. Postpunk is more punk than punk itself, but thats a hot take. I heard that the term "New musick" and "Positive punk" were terms used back then.
Honestly I just became used to the term postpunk
Post-punk is a great name. End of.
It also led to other genres picking up the "post-" name, like whatever "post-grunge" is supposed to refer to (a lot of so-called "post-grunge" bands are just grunge that continued after April 1994).
post-rock is rock for nerds
post-punk is punk for ppl who think theyre cool
post-grunge is grunge but corny
post-britpop is britpop but sadder
post-bop is bebop for the excentric
post-industrial is industrial but listenable
hope i helped🤟
@@tabom385 So, I'm a nerd who thinks he's cool? I'll give you the first statement, but I don't think I'm cool!
@@johngerygooz3251 You're post-cool
@@LuDux Post-cool sounds good, but what's it excactly mean?
@Lucas F Based on what TABOM said:
Post-hardcore's hardcore punk for people who think they're cool.
Post-metal's metal for nerds.
Obviously, it isn't all that true.
Those bands you mentioned as "post punk" I considered "new wave". But I could be wrong on that term.
I was talking to a co-worker about post-punk once and tried to describe it. He said "Oh, you mean like ska?" He was not wrong.
Some people define genre by musical and aesthetic style, others define it the same way artistic movements are defined, by the arc of creative evolution. I think that’s why there’s always disagreement.
Not to mention Hardcore Punk was birthed not too long after
All music made after 1977 is post-punk because it came after punk. Taylor 👏 Swift 👏 is 👏 Post 👏 Punk 👏 👏 👏
And what does that have to do with this?
@@SnailHatan That after the term post punk came to be there was an actual movement of punk that came to be hardcore which was actually TECHNICALLY post punk.
@@ggallintedtalk You got a point. HC and other 80ies punk sub genres are often ignored when talking punk and post punk.
@@riskyfueI all punk music that has been posted on the internet is post punk
Post punk,new wave, synth, cold wave,ebm.. Whatever they all have one thing in common
🖤DARK VIBE🖤
Should just be called goth
“Nevermind the bullocks”
"Here's The Sux Pistols"
@@christopherregan1654 Never you mind the pillocks......here's the Sox Pastels
To make things even stranger, Television and The Ramones started at the same exact club in New York and Television played there first
Post-Punk is just an extension of new wave. No biggie
Early alternative pop/rock
How about drum n bass? It has drums and bass.
Cant wait to listen to my favorite genre. Guitar and singer.
Singer-songwriter and spoken word can also meet that criticism. Most artists wrote their own music, meaning by definition most singers are songwriters, and the line between speaking and musical ideas lich sprechstimme, talking blues, and rapping is so blurry as to be nonexistent.
that is not what drum and bass means at all lmao
@@tjenadonn6158 rapping has a rhythm and spoken word not or am i wrong? also most singers do not write their own song, they perform songs written by other people. not that they dont exist, but they are much rarer then just singers.
@@frullmusic i know the genre. it just has a dumb name that sounds like someone mad it up that has nothing to do with music lol
I prefer Guitar And Singer And Bass And Also Drums And Sometimes Keyboard
I’ve felt this for a while, but still think the label has some meaning.
I mean, garage music in my opinion is the best name for this type of music, because that also encompasses Proto punk, which goes back to 66 my friends. Hell, before that there was some howling wolf action, and peoples names that I don't even remember in the 50s, and this is the garage sound which has continued right up until today and the words rock 'n' roll do not cover it properly. It is its own thing punk was bold enough to create its own name but garage should've been there all along.
Thanks for stopping by SORG's garage. May the super organism be with you?
What it was originally called New Wave. That way when you reference other similar genres like dark wave, cold wave and minimalist wave it all makes sense.
Post punk does mean something! It’s when people realized that the big corporations don’t care if you buy your guitars at a thrift shop and your album’s production budget is 8 dollars
8 dollars on production? What kind of luxurious punk have you been listening to? That's almost non-existent instead of just non-existent
It should be called punk with darker sunglasses
Most Post Punk turned into Gothic Rock. Then branched out. Most bands at the time of the late 70’s and early 80’s didn’t really have a genre name . We use to call it Dark Wave . Then there was new wave , Art Rock like the Heads in the early 80’s -Bands like Joy Division which came from Punk when they were a band called Warsaw in 76-77. Siouxsee. The Cure, Bauhaus , Tones on Tail, Red Lorry-Yellow Lorry . Virgin Prunes, -British bands. Christian Death all led to bands in NYC like The New Creatures. Empire Hideous. Sunshine Blind Loretta’s Doll. Not to mention all the German Bands and English . Sisters of Mercy coined the Goth vernacular in 87 and from then onward it was and is called Gothic Rock
in germany we say „neue deutsche welle“ in english 'new german wave“ it has more indie but describes this music quite well, whereby this also describes a period of time
It's about the music influenced by punk
You said it's not an aesthetic and then said Television is clearly post-punk based on their sound.
Disagree, mate. Post-punk is a fucking awesome name, as is "post-" anything. It feels like punk that has poke-evolved into a more advanced form.
Punk is punk. So just call it punk. Simple.
New wave! There! (until you realize it’s exactly as non-descript as post-punk)
Clear American/Canadian opinion here, in Britian there's a clear genre called postpunk
I know a lot of British punks who would disagree haha
@@user-oz2jy6vm6m true but due to the nature you can't dispute the validity of a genre, whether you like it or not there are a selection of bands that have been put within the post-punk label and you can't really "undo" that, you can disagree but it's impossible to remove a genre/label once it has been used by a few people
There is an interesting discussion here, but to be honest, I have covid and prone to misinterpreting things. I should probably step away from the internet haha - will come back to this discussion when life makes more sense
“Post rock” also drives me nuts. I like a lot of bands that fit that name but it doesn’t describe the sound in any meaningful way
I've read that post-rock doesn't really have a sound. It's only supposed to be using rock instruments for anything but rock music, or using it for different timbres and textures and stuff. It went downhill once the genre was assigned a sound when it is supposed to be a mere genre umbrella.
The term post-punk was originally used to describe music that was INSPIRED by Punk
Art Rock + New Wave = Post-Punk
Let's just call it aesthetic punk 😅