ALL ABOUT IMAGE Pop rock with a touch of punk

The lines between musical genres are getting more blurred.
By DAN NAILEN
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Shania is a punk rocker.
So is Britney. And Pink. And both Simpson girls.
Or so they would have you believe. All these pop princesses have posed for photo shoots wearing T-shirts touting punk-rock legends from the Ramones to the Sex Pistols, clearly trying to nab a little of the street cred associated with acts more radical than they.
No matter how many tattoos Britney or Pink gets, or how many dye jobs Ashlee Simpson undergoes to avoid the blond-bombshell look of her sister Jessica, it's hard for a pop singer to avoid a bubblegum image. Slipping on a T-shirt is a ploy to make teen poppers look more streetwise and musically savvy, and the same goes for a megastar like Twain.
Sometimes artists' efforts to link to punk's past, and all the imagery and ideas associated with it -- teenage angst, radical politics, an implied middle finger raised toward authority -- are a little more subtle.
Identifiers
The Red Hot Chili Peppers might be punks in their multimillionaire hearts, but when they sport mohawks to an awards show 20 years into their career, it's more fashion than rebellion. When No Doubt's Gwen Stefani dons bondage pants in her stage attire, it's a nod to a classic bit of punk fashion circa 1977, even though No Doubt's sunny pop-rock is pretty far from punk. Avril Lavigne's combat boots and wallet-chain were a big part of her identity when her debut album arrived in 2002.
True punk rockers still roaming the Earth in 2004 are probably appalled that people like Shania Twain or Ashlee Simpson dare associate themselves with the beloved Ramones, even if only through a T-shirt, and only in the name of fashion. But the truth is, pop music has been stealing from punk since the genre burst onto the scene in the '70s. What punks might forget is that those bands were nicking parts of pop music at the same time. Punk and pop have never been too far apart.
Short, catchy songs. Striking visual imagery. An ability to create an almost cultish relationship among fans. These things work in both punk and pop worlds.
Has any pop act been as savvy at marketing as the brash and obnoxious Sex Pistols, a band that turned a ban by the BBC into a hit song, "Anarchy in the U.K.," and a hit album, "Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols"? The Pistols are the definition of a one-hit wonder, yet they are revered, while a purely pop one-hit wonder is generally laughed at for years. Why are the Pistols still revered? More for their image and attitude than their actual songs.
Not unlike Britney Spears, yes?
The Ramones are almost punk by default. To his dying day, Joey Ramone could not believe the rapid-fire songs he was writing weren't Top 40 hits, and he did everything he could to make them such, from jumping on the video bandwagon early in MTV's existence to playing on the Lollapalooza tour with younger and more popular acts.
Jump forward a few years from pioneering punks the Pistols, Ramones and The Clash to the next generation of American punk, including the SST Records bands like Black Flag, the Minutemen and Meat Puppets. All those acts in one way or another made their way to major record labels, looking for a little of the notoriety and money that comes with pop stardom.
Metal factor
Black Flag's last singer, Henry Rollins, made the most headway with his metal-tinged Rollins Band, but the Meat Puppets made their way onto MTV, as did fIREHOSE, the band started by ex-Minutemen leader Mike Watt. The Replacements moved from noisy punk kids to mature, relatively straightforward rock songwriters, even touring with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, but never broke through to the mainstream to any significant degree.
While those acts never became straight-up pop stars, they laid the groundwork for bands like Nirvana, who were punk in ethos and attitude as well as much of their music, and Green Day, who turned the ability to sound like a '70s-era punk act into platinum in the mid-'90s. Rancid hit big with a retro-punk look, a retro-punk sound and some skillfully poppy punk songs. The Offspring and Blink-182 first hit with an old-school punk sound, but without much of the angst or politics associated with, say, The Sex Pistols. What these newer "punk" bands showed is that punk riffs are now as likely to produce pop hits as are metal, dance, R & amp;B or soul music.
The closest thing we might have in 2004 to the original rebellion and spirit of punk -- and the resulting societal outrage -- is hip-hop. Whether it's the violent imagery and gay-baiting of acts like Eminem, the self-described "thug" tales of 50 Cent or Tupac, or the politically radical rhymes of The Coup or Public Enemy, no other genre seems capable of attracting the controversy that punk once did.
One of the old saws about punk music was that you could still be a great punk band even if you couldn't play your instruments. In 2004, you can be a great punk without even having instruments, just a microphone and a pen.
But a cool retro T-shirt doesn't hurt.