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Mike Dirnt, Billy Joe Armstrong, and Tré Cool from the band Green Day.

How Green Day’s American Idiot Pitted Punk Against George W Bush

Twenty years ago, a trio of Calfornian stoners released a polemic against Republican America that politicised a generation.
by Pippa Bailey via New Statesman on September 30, 2024
Black and white photo of the outside of a bar, with "CB GB: OMFUG" written on an overhang, and graffiti and posters on the walls and windows

Real Estate Developers Killed NYC’s Vibrant ’70s Music Scene

In the 1970s and early ’80s, NYC’s racially and ethnically diverse working-class neighborhoods nurtured groundbreaking rap, salsa, and punk music.
by Kurt Hollander via Jacobin on February 11, 2024
Part of a Xerox poster with the words "punk with copymachine" in front of a face

Xerox and Roll: The Corporate Machine and the Making of Punk

On the 85th anniversary of the first xerographic print, a collection of punk flyers from Cornell University provides an object lesson on anti-art.
by Alex Houston via JSTOR Daily on October 22, 2023
Front cover of Kevin Mattson's book, "We're Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and THE REAL CULTURE WAR of 1980s America."

Mapping Punk Rock in the Early 1980s

The nationwide spread of a counterculture.
by Glenn Dowdle via Northwestern University Knight Lab on August 15, 2022
Four women (L7) sit on a bench together wearing jeans and jackets.

The Women Who Built Grunge

Bands like L7 and Heavens to Betsy were instrumental to the birth of the grunge scene, but for decades were treated like novelties and sex objects.
by Lisa Whittington-Hill via Longreads on June 29, 2022
Crowd at Black Flag concert

The Unraveling of SST Records

Jim Ruland’s book on the legendary punk label helps explain why we lack a meaningful counterculture today.
by Michael Friedrich via The New Republic on May 3, 2022
The Dead Kennedys against a graffiti wall.

Punk Versus Reagan

A new book on American punk paints the movement as the last gasp of left-wing cultural resistance in the 1980s.
by Alexander Billet via Jacobin on November 9, 2020
Black and white photo montage of the cover of We're Not Here to Entertain, with a punk rock singer and Ronald Reagan, superimposed on a background of Minor Threat playing on stage.
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Remember Punk Rock? Probably Not...: The Real Culture War of 1980's America

When most people hear the word “punk,” they think of drug addled, nasty behavior. The truth is, it was driven by a visceral hatred for the president.
by Kevin Mattson via HNN on August 30, 2020

Dead Kennedys in the West: The Politicized Punks of 1970s San Francisco

The new punk generation made the hippies look past their prime.
by Lincoln A. Mitchell via Literary Hub on October 22, 2019

The Forgotten Story of Pure Hell, America’s First Black Punk Band

The four-piece lived with the New York Dolls and played with Sid Vicious, but they’ve been largely written out of cultural history.
by Cassidy George via Dazed on August 8, 2018

Nazi Punks F**k Off

An oral history of how Black Flag, Bad Brains, and other hardcore acts reclaimed punk from white supremacists.
by Steve Knopper via GQ on January 16, 2018
The Go-Go's on July 30, 1981. From left, Kathy Valentine, Charlotte Caffey, Jane Wiedlin, Belinda Carlisle, and Gina Schock.

We Got the Beat

How The Go-Go’s emerged from the LA punk scene in the late ’70s to become the first and only female band to have a number one album.
by Lisa Whittington-Hill via Longreads on January 16, 2024
Katherine Rye Jewell standing in front of a tree and brick building on Vanderbilt University's campus.

‘Live From the Underground’ Details the Influential World of College Radio

What made those left-of-the-dial broadcasts so special during the 1980s, ‘90s and 2000s?
by Michael Patrick Brady via WBUR on December 5, 2023

Afloat with Static

Jenny Turner reviews "Face It" by Debbie Harry.
by Jenny Turner via London Review of Books on December 14, 2019

The Monitor: The Punk Album that Predicted Our Politics

How Titus Andronicus drew on Civil War lore to frame contemporary social divides.
by Alex Sayf Cummings via Tropics of Meta on November 4, 2017
"REM" musicians pose in front of a mirror.

How R.E.M. Created Alternative Music

In the cultural wasteland of the Reagan era, they showed that a band could have mass appeal without being cheesy, or nostalgic, or playing hair metal.
by Mark Krotov via The New Yorker on November 13, 2024
Michael Knott playing guitar

Michael Knott, Who Changed The Course of Christian Rock, Dies at 61

An entire industry wouldn't exist without him, yet few know his name. In his songs, Knott challenged the faithful to examine their faults and hypocrisies.
by Lars Gotrich via NPR on March 14, 2024
Woman creating a "zine", using a presumably Xerox photocopy machine.

American Counterculture, Glimpsed Through Zines

Zine-making is a tradition shared by the young and alienated, people enamored with the fringes of culture. Can a museum exhibit capture its essence?
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on February 14, 2024
A turntable and records.

What’s Old is New Again (and Again): On the Cyclical Nature of Nostalgia

Retro was not the antithesis to the sub- and countercultural experiments of the 1960s, it grew directly out of them.
by Tobias Becker via Literary Hub on December 13, 2023
Lou Reed in front of a photography setup.

The Canonization of Lou Reed

In a new biography, the Velvet Underground front man embodies a New York that exists only in memory.
by Jeremy Lybarger via The New Republic on October 17, 2023
A picture of the author as a teenager with his parents, in his bedroom decorated with rock music posters.

My Dad and Kurt Cobain

When my father moved to Taiwan, a fax machine and a shared love of music bridged an ocean.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on August 15, 2022

A Possible Majority

A political history of the present moment.
by Jedediah Britton-Purdy via Dissent on October 27, 2020
Graffitied Robert E. Lee Statue with child playing basketball.

The New Monuments That America Needs

Every statue defends an idea about history, but what if those ideas are wrong?
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on September 15, 2020
Overhead image of suburban houses from Levittown, Pennsylvania

The Origins of Sprawl

On William Gibson, Sonic Youth, and the genesis of the American suburb.
by Jason Diamond via The Paris Review on August 26, 2020
An image of Bob Dylan performing with a spotlight on him.

Tangled Up in Bob Stories: A Dylan Reading List

The author reflects on his own journey with Dylan, and shares some of his favorite pieces of Dylanology.
by Aaron Gilbreath via Longreads on June 24, 2020

What’s Left of Generation X

To be Gen X was to be disaffected from the consumer norms of the 1980s, but to be pessimistic about any chance for social transformation.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via Dissent on October 8, 2019

Made for Misfits: The Colorful History of the Black Leather Jacket

“Leather-laden outlaws struck fear into the hearts of civilians and cops alike, as they tore through towns with gleeful irreverence.”
by Lydia Sviatoslavsky via Collectors Weekly on October 2, 2019

The Breaks of History

We might say that these books are recording a life with music, and that they are worth listening to.
by Robert Cashin Ryan via Public Books on July 29, 2019
Colorful illustration of Larry Norman, haloed by yellow.

The Unlikely Endurance of Christian Rock

The genre has been disdained by the church and mocked by secular culture. That just reassured practitioners that they were rebels on a righteous path.
by Kelefa Sanneh via The New Yorker on September 17, 2018
Women's liberation movement demonstrating in Washington D.C.

The Waves of Feminism, and Why People Keep Fighting Over Them, Explained

If you have no idea which wave of feminism we’re in right now, read this.
by Constance Grady via Vox on March 20, 2018
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