PnB – Healing
Similar artists: All To Get Her, Green Day, Good Charlotte, Sum 41, Bowling For Soup
Genre: Punk, Pop Punk, Pop Rock
You can’t blame artists for getting in their minds that they’re different from other people. After all, their life trajectory involves getting the call and locking themselves up in a room to create things. That’s not a story that is much different from psychiatric patients or from prophets. Artists, however, are the only ones who might be in the running to get a lot of attention from strangers for their work.
And who doesn’t want to be loved? Most artists aren’t masochists, so they’ll take the very best of what life has to offer them. However, in order to get to that place, they need to reconcile two missions with which all of them struggle. The first is creating art from the perspective of being a special breed. The second is creating art, knowing that people react to things that they can immediately understand.
PnB’s “Healing” is a song that, if you’re a pop-punk fan or have even been one, should resonate immediately. It’s rock music delivered with the softest of touches. It’s a tune that promises good times after trouble is over. And it’s crafted just so that it can get under your skin. PnBm know what their prospective audience will want to hear and have no trouble delivering just that.
Frank Turner – Do One
Similar artists: Brian Fallon, Frightened Rabbit
Genre: Pop Punk
If The Beach Boys were, indeed, a pocket-sized symphony orchestra, then punk bands were electrified corner street performers. Their mission wasn’t just to cut rock music down to its essential ingredients. Bands also wanted you to believe that playing a guitar solo or, worse, a drum solo were things that were just going to waste your time. And I believed them.
Someone else who trusted in the Gospel of Punk is Frank Turner. Now, Turner has acquired an almost mythical status, particularly in England. His approach is to make the kind of songs that The Clash might’ve wanted to write had Joe Strummer forgotten to pay the electricity bill and decided that lyrics don’t need to be chased too far from home.
Frank Turner’s “Do One” is as direct as songwriting goes. It is earnest and wants you to know it. This is not so much a song as a list of advice that you might consider taking. Now, writing a song that is so sparse in both word choice and instrumentation would be a gamble for most performers. But, clearly, Turner has reached a point where he believes enough of a rapport has been established with his audience that they don’t need guitar or drum solos in order to tell them how he really feels.