1 in 4 people in the UK will have a mental illness in their lifetime. According to Samaritans the number of suicides in the UK has risen, with 6,233 people taking their life in 2013, and male suicide at a 14 year high. Suicide rates within young people is rising as well.
More and more people are using music as a sense of escapism and no genres are helping more it seems than pop punk, metal and emo. Pop punk’s joyous roots in sunny days and pizza is still an important cornerstone of the genre, but its ability to connect with fans at a deeper level and actually help people is something that other genres should take note of.
Aidan, who suffered from depression and turned to punk said to me: “I think live gigs are really good for people’s state of mind. It’s very easy to achieve a sense of mindfulness when you’re at a show. For a few hours, you can totally forget any problems you have and just get lost in the moment. I’ve never taken for granted how important that is.”
Flip back a few weeks; it’s a cold February evening in Manchester as droves of sweaty and smiling pop punk fans bolster themselves out of the exit of Victoria Warehouse. Their flannelled shirts and trendy beards offer a slim chance of warmth in this bitterly cold Mancuanian Thursday night. Tie-dye shirts merge with dip-dye hair as the crowd leave The Wonder Years’ show supporting Enter Shikari. A venue usually reserved for raves, tonight turned into a pop punk pit as the “Came Out Swinging” rockers play to the sold out crowd.
As a genre it sometimes gets ridiculed for being immature and novelty; yet give it a closer look and its songwriters tread where mainstream artists never go. The Wonder Years’ trio of albums ‘The Upsides’, ‘Suburbia I’ve Given You All And Now I Am Nothing’ and ‘The Greatest Generation’ are a soundtrack to those feeling isolated, scared, lonely and nervous. A holy trinity of albums that cemented The Wonder Years as one of the biggest bands in pop punk. However their latest release (2015’s ‘No Closer To Heaven’) touches on content far deeper. A homage to the hardship that lead singer, Dan Campbell, faced in between recording with a friend’s suicide that hit him particularly hard. ‘Cardinals’ mentions regret of ignoring friends when they need you most, ‘Cigarettes & Saints’ imagines putting yourself into the shoes of someone on the edge of taking their own lives in 5 minutes of “hairs-on-the-back-of-our neck-standing-up” vigour, ‘You In January’ reminisces of the lost people that made you great and ‘Stained Glass Ceiling’ speaks of annoyance to this unfair world with an angry crescendo from letlive’s Jason Butler.
Long gone are the days of bands moaning about their mums, skateboarding, and catching eyes with girls at rock shows. My Chemical Romance aren’t around to define emo as ‘The Black Parade’, glamourizing being sad with too much guyliner and side fringes. Most now look back at this era as a novelty, Buzzfeed create quizzes as to see “how emo are you” and “what your taste in pizza says about your favourite pop punk band”. Bands like Blink 182 and My Chemical Romance still hold goliath status within the genre but it seems some of the fans and sounds have moved on.
To the outsider, pop punk and emo might not have changed at all, it still just a load of skater kids getting shit tattoos, pitting and pointing and moaning about life; but it’s something much deeper nowadays.
Baltimore’s Have Mercy’s debut, ‘The Earth Pushed Back’, is an intelligent, ravaged, post-break up album to scream in the shower to. UK emo-rockers Moose Blood produced the soundtrack to Britain’s lost youth with 2014’s ‘I’ll Keep You In Mind From Time To Time’. A record whose songs are more like troubled poetic prose then tracks in the top 40 at the time singing about Cheerleaders, Counting Stars and Pitbull rhyming Kodak with Kodak. Bands are writing songs about emotions, not clichés anymore. This is what I’m feeling, this is what I want to say and this is what all of this combined sounds like.
Jump forward 24 hours to Manchester venue, Gorilla, and the majority of the same crowd are watching Philadelphia band Modern Baseball drain the vocal chords of the angsty few. A show supported by emo outfit, Sorority Noise, whose lead singer Cameron Boucher discusses his manic depression, commanding the crowd to never suffer in silence. It’s never your fault, he implies, urging all to tell your favourite people you love them every day.
Modern Baseball famously like to joke about themselves, describing themselves to me in an interview as “terrible, wet and horrible”. However few bands offer the same level of brutal honesty within their lyrics to help the listener get through trouble. Their first two albums ‘Sports’ and ‘You’re Gonna Miss It All’ are staples in any self-respecting emo rock fan boy or girl’s collection during relationship troubles and the empty space after a break up from a partner. Their latest, ‘Holy Ghost’, is even more than that. Their show at Gorilla sold out long in advance and is one which live exuberance will remain in the memory in all who attended. A collective room shouting lyrics of broken hearts and drunken arguments back at the foursome onstage in an energy that bigger bands in bigger rooms can’t manage. The underlying complexities offer an edge and speak to a demographic that mainstream rock simply doesn’t satisfy.
Pop punk, emo and metal has always had an element of familiarity to it. A sense of belonging and being around people just like you and being part of a collective movement who care about each other. This is never more prevalent than when mental instability is in question. No one should feel alone and sad and people should care about each other and help those in need- that’s not pop punk, that’s just being human.
I took to one of the largest online pop punk communities, UK Pop Punk, on Facebook to see if the genre has ever helped anyone before. The Facebook page with over 7,000 members is a constant stream of news, opinions and points of view from the thriving UK pop punk, emo and metal scene. My point in question was to ask if anyone was helped during tough times by music.
Seren, who suffered and overcame cancer in 2015 said: “Architects helped because Tom who is in the band had skin cancer. Their music revolved a lot around talking about that. People can be very understanding but it isn’t quite the same unless they actually know how you feel and they captured a lot of it well. A lot of bands get angry about cancer, I think that serves quite well to how I felt but didn’t really express it to anyone, you should be angry about it and I used music as an outlet for that.” I was inundated with comments and messages from those who saw my post and they all had an individual story to tell in which music had helped them get through trouble.
It’s proof the genre’s evolution. Take The Wonder Years’ ‘No Closer To Heaven’, one of the most mature, clever and artistic pop punk records ever produced. It’s a direction in which the new mature and modern brand of pop punk is heading. It seems the immature novelty fanboy with his baseball cap, tie dye top, shitty tattoos and shorts has got in his van with his friends and pizza and has firmly left this town.