Twenty years on from Avril Lavigne’s Let Go, it’s time to agree that mall-punk is the best music | Robert Moran
, another jab at Lavigne’s authenticity. What did they want from this 17-year-old Canadian singer? To see her spitting at cops? To watch her shoot up and die in a New York hotel?
At mall-punk’s peak, some enlightened critics were already questioning their cohorts’ dismissal of the genre. Writing in thein 2003, Kelefa Sanneh described mall-punk as “a subgenre ruled by polite, energetic bands that sometimes seem to have been concocted in an MTV laboratory. The term is invariably used as an insult, even though the bands themselves are generally unobjectionable.” Imagine hating Good Charlotte, he was telling us, and most of us aged over 14 just laughed.
I remember a particularly shameful moment when Good Charlotte came down for an intimate showcase at Sony Music’s Sydney headquarters. I bumped into a buddy there, we got tipsy on free beer, and we ended up heckling loudly all through a Madden Bros’ acoustic set, cackling “Another loser anthem, woah-oh!” after every song and drawing disgusted looks from Sony’s label reps. To their credit, the brothers were good sports: they giggled, gave us a shout-out from the stage.
In any case, removed from their oppressive original context, these stand up as amazing pop songs. Melodic, energetic, fast-paced, romantic, resentful, playful, bratty and over before you know it: now that’s what I call music. I realise this now, as should we all. I mean, have you ever done Sum 41’sJulia Stiles-esqueIronically, the kids already get it.
It also means we’re one step closer to the Y2K ideal of having a ska band performing in the final act of every new Hollywood teen movie, which is concrete proof the world is moving in the right direction.