Punk rock is fundamentally and proudly and, therefore, essentially antiestablishment. Principally, it has always been a creative act of defiance and a celebration of defiance.
Punk is a stepchild of rock ’n’ roll. The instrumentation is in the family to be sure, with guitars and drums and so on. The lyrical content has some kindred traits too, though it tends to be more pointed than its parent with an incisive eye and aggressive disposition toward politics and social machinery.
The style is proportionally pointed and subversive. Guitars and drums and vocals eschew a more traditional rock ’n’ roll feel, and there’s an anarchist’s anger for the music industry and its pop(ular) acolytes. It’s supposed to feel like a rejection of something — capitalism, romance, the American dream, soulless music, etc. etc. It rejects musical norms and bourgeois themes with ferocity and delight. Like an angsty teenager, the earliest punk music feels like a rejection of just about everything, including its parent.
There’s a lot more throat-clearing to be done, like how this history orients punk rock to underground and decidedly interesting sub-genres. But, defiance is the lifeblood of the movement. You can feel it in the instrumentation, in the lyrics, in the vocals, in the mosh pit. That’s why so many find the music baffling and irritating. It’s why some find it vicious and unacceptable. It’s why I, and many others, love it.
Defiance is not of value without context. Without something worthy of opposition, the posture makes no sense. It’s like a toddler sticking out his chest to his parents, even as they offer him the thing for which he’s asking.
To get theological for a moment, defiance is part of the human problem. Pride operating in defiance against God and love is at the heart of our predicament. It’s a key feature in the destruction of people, animals, and land. We act with self-interest, and dig our heels in, over against loving others.
However, what is redemption if not the defiant act of love in a context of brokenness and death? What is justice if not a defiant imposition of wholeness where fracture or fragmentation has occurred? Defiance in the right context not only makes sense, it’s necessary, right, and good. We ought to act with defiance toward evil and vice and deception.
Defiance is the stiffened spine of opposition; it’s a steely gaze toward a determined, worthy foe. The musical form of this posture is punk rock.
My favorite song of the last couple years uses precisely this logic to capture something beautiful that I’m convinced we need more of: defiant joy.
Whatever all the “vibe shift” has been in the last five years, mostly it has felt foreboding. There was Covid. There was the car crash impact of Trumpian politics across the social landscape. There were UFOs and AI and woke policing. On and on we could go. There were school shootings and highway protests and resurgent partisan podcasts. Of course, there’s the rampant loneliness and SSRI dependence and rapidly rising (and then declining) gender transitions. There’s sports gambling and doom scrolling and gooning. There’s adult child estrangement and fears of commitment. Really, on and on we could go. Many of these things weren’t new per se, but they’ve all become culturally noticeable and lamentable.
In spite of our advancement and comforts, this moment in the west feels uneasy and unhealthy. We’re sick, or at least we feel sick. Much of it feels inherited, yet much of it feels chosen. The backward momentum is palpable and poignant, and it is worthy of opposition. Whatever all the vibe shift signals, it involves a change in the internal collective response to our cultural sickness.
One of my favorite icons of these feelings is a simple punk rock song by Tiny Moving Parts, a midwest emo band with technical, mathy guitar riffs and deliberately melodic song structures. It’s from their 2024 full length release Deep in the Blue, and it’s aptly titled “The Cure (But Not Really)”.
The song starts at a sprint, a bright one. And I don’t just mean the pacing is fast; I mean the sound immediately conjures an image and a feeling of moving quickly, of alacritous running. The guitar is chipper and warm. Honestly, it strikes my psyche like the opening of “Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind but at a faster pace and without the doo-doo-doos. Much like that famed song there’s a deliberate interplay and ironic divergence between the melodic and lyrical themes. The brightness gives way to something apprehensive.
Emo music tends toward overly literal lyrics or overtly metaphorical ones. Tiny Moving Parts gravitates to the latter, so lyrics about temperature and uneasy feelings are used to convey a deep-seated, widely-held anxiety.
Of course, the anxiety doesn’t sit well, but the sensations aren’t communicated easily. The effects are emotional and physical and negative - references to stomach churning and dull razor blades gesture in the direction. But that’s all we get as listeners. Maybe the band has something specific in their minds, but the song only evokes generalities.
I almost want to critique the song on these grounds. Malcolm Gladwell once made an argument about country music that has been bouncing around in my head ever since. He said the strength of country music’s lyrical ethos is its specificity. The details enable a listener to connect with what feels like a real story that can then be projected onto one’s own experience or feelings. Vagueness in lyrics can be lazy or cheap, like they’re asking the listener to do the hard work of connecting the art to their life. The lyrics in this song definitely flirt with that…unless they’re about a specific broadly-experienced reality. Like a gray cloud over top of the lot of us (a metaphor that’ll rear its head shortly). That’s my inclination; in this instance the vague anxiety is actually specific. It’s the anxiety we all seem to be feeling in the 2020s. I think it helps explain our political fervor and our yearning for religious revival. We all seem to think things feel off.
And, just before the chorus (and just before we dip toward nihilism), we’re told, “I think it’s the perfect time for a change.”
Yes, and amen. Let’s seek a change. I love this pivot because it is existential and spiritual. The first thing Jesus tells people when he begins public ministry is to repent. Whatever else repentance includes, it’s no less than a willingness to recognize the wrongness of one’s former direction and to change course.
What does Tiny Moving Parts suggest? That’s the hook: “Run…with me.”
This line is repeated several times, then its essence is doubled down on: “Run until your feet fall off your legs, so I know at least you’re trying to race from what’s coming.”
It feels like a much-needed jailbreak, like freedom with friends. Let’s move together and move quickly and move away from the anxieties and failures of our moment. That’s the right first step, a willingness to change and movement in a new direction.
The pacing of the intro and chorus are the key. It’s definitively a step of happiness and joy to embrace change with friends. Better still, it’s defiantly a step of happiness and joy to do so. Defiant joy in an age of anxiety and bad vibes will look a lot like trying new things with our friends. It might even be the simple willingness to make friends or sustain friendships rather than stagnate and self-medicate by other means. One of the sweetly moving musical decisions in the song is the buttressing backup vocals in the chorus, which attest to the subtle but integral beauty of movement with friends.
Like ordinary life though, verse 2 complicates the picture a bit. The music slows back down. Together, the protagonist and company “swallow vitamins” and “reconnect again.” The result is they grow like chameleons.
This sounds like people who have partaken of a culture’s prescribed medicines to alleviate that culture’s contagions. So rather than moving away from the problem, they blend in with the masses and become part of the problem again.
We’re all prone to this. We can see and feel that we’re not healthy, but we’ll turn to our favorite Instagram influencer for her #ad remedy or the latest manosphere Youtuber yelling at inspiring us to be a better version of ourselves. The tailwind of culture nudges us imperceptibly but powerfully toward conformity. We often end up joining and perpetuating the sickness.
Cue: cloud metaphor - “Why does the midwest sky hold the darkest clouds above my head every night?”
This is the bridge of the song. Things still don’t look or feel right, even as we take the vitamins and blend in. We’re still anxious and depressed. We lack hope, so we doubt the future. We avoid commitments, which means we avoid love. All of these feelings loom large in our thoughts and in our world, like a hazy, gray cloud hovering above us all.
So what’s the first step? You guessed it: Run…with me.
And that’s it, but the song’s title makes more sense now - “The Cure (But Not Really)”. The first step toward something new is the same as the first step away from something old or dying. Ideally, we’ll do it together, and we’ll do it with resilience and joy. Because maybe it could get worse, but it could certainly get a whole lot better.
That’s why this song is best written as punk rock. It’s defiance against regression and nihilism. It’s defiance against loneliness and stagnancy. It’s a baby step or two in the direction of wholeness and happiness by way of friendship into the unknown.
I think my favorite part about this whole thing is knowing the band writes the lyrics comfortably after the instrumentation, so says Dylan Mattheisen, the frontman of Tiny Moving Parts. The band writes and memorizes the music before he writes the words, which means he writes his songs the same way I receive music. For me, the instrumentation and melody drive the experience, and the lyrics may or may not enhance that experience.
In the case of this particular song, my soul and Dylan’s feel something similar in the music: defiant joy looks a lot like friends moving together in opposition to the angst of our time. This song is what that sounds like in my head.
