Punk rock isn't something you grow out of Punk rock is an attitude, and the essence of that attitude is 'give us some truth' — Joe Strummer
Music never leaves you alone, and punk rock will always be there when nothing else will. — Pete Wentz
PUNK IS: the personal expression of uniqueness that comes from the experiences of growing up in touch with our human ability to reason and ask questions. — Greg Graffin
I think punk rock, especially for me, was a big middle finger to this whole talent thing. — Mike Watt
In fact, punk rock means exemplary manners to your fellow human beings. — Joe Strummer
I created Punk for this day and age. Do you see Britney walking around wearing ties and singing punk? Hell no. That's what I do. I'm like a Sid Vicious for a new generation. — Avril Lavigne
Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock. — Kurt Cobain
For me, punk is about real feelings. It's not about, 'Yeah, I am a punk and I'm angry.' That's a lot of crap. It's about loving the things that really matter: passion, heart and soul. — Joey Ramone
It's true the punk fashion itself was iconographic: rips and dirt, safety pins, zips, slogans, and hairstyles. These motifs were so iconic in themselves - motifs of rebellion. — Vivienne Westwood
To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom. — Patti Smith
Rock music should be gross: that's the fun of it. It gets up and drops its trousers. — Bruce Dickinson
Let's play with sound, forget all knowledge and instrumental skills, and just use instinct – the same way punk did. — Yann Tiersen
Music is music; you can't change rock and say well this is punk rock and this is acid rock or rockabilly. — Chuck Berry
I took Punk to be the detonation of some slow-fused projectile buried deep in society's flank a decade earlier, and I took it to be, somehow, a sign. — William Gibson
The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands, because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political. — Penelope Spheeris
Short Punk Music Quotes
Rock music sounds like an octopus making love to a bagpipe. — Brother Dave Gardner
I discovered the Clash, the Pistols, obviously the Ramones, Blondie. — Jerry Only
I discovered the Clash, the Pistols, obviously the Ramones, Blondie. — Gerald Caiafa
We were watching bands like the Ramones and Blondie and other bands beginning to ignite. — Gerald Caiafa
We were watching bands like the Ramones and Blondie and other bands beginning to ignite. — Jerry Only
Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties. — David Bowie
I like music that's more offensive. I like it to sound like nails on a blackboard, get me wild. — Iggy Pop
Punk Music Image Quotes
Life is like a piano, the white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness, but as you go through life's journey, remember that the black keys also makes music.
Punk Rock Music Quotes
When you talk like an asshole and look like an asshole, you're an asshole — John Lydon
This is Manchester, we do things differently here. — Tony Wilson
Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock. — Kurt Cobain
Behind every girl's favorite song there is an untold story.
The single best thing that has happened in my lifetime in music, after punk rock, is being able to share music, globally for free. — Steve Albini
I’m in a band. I don’t go to church every Sunday. I love punk rock music. Sometimes I use swear words a lot. I respect and admire gay men and women. I’m obsessed with horror films. I know what shame feels like. And guess what old man? Jesus is still my Savior. — Hayley Williams
Punk rock is a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators about music that takes up the energies, the bodies, the hearts, the souls, the time and the minds of young men who give everything they have to it. — Iggy Pop
The earth has music for those who listen.
When Punk Rock happened, it created an opening in the culture... it made it ok to think you could play music, even though you had no musical training. — Kim Gordon
I listen to all kinds of bands. I like rock music, like, male rock bands. I'm more into that instead of female singers. I like Nirvana, Green Day, System Of A Down. I also like punk rock, and I love bands like Coldplay. — Avril Lavigne
I was in lots of dodgy bands growing up and I always fancied myself in a band. But, you know, I was rubbish at writing music. So maybe one day I'll play a rock star, or punk rocker. — Gemma Arterton
Me personally, I side more with punk rock bands. I grew up with The Misfits, The Dead Boys, The Damned, Dropkick Murphys, and early AFI. That was the stuff that really got me into music. Song writing wise, bands like Alkaline Trio were very important to me for beginning to write songs. — Andy Biersack
Punk Rock Song Quotes
When I began to cover songs for YouTube, they all tended to be in the super pop-genre.. as in, smash-hit songs. My writing process was heavily influenced by this - I went from a more heavy punk rock style to straight up sugary-sweet pop. — Alex Goot
The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll. — Jerry Only
The Ruts were a great punk rock band from England whose songs were as excellent as their time together was short. — Henry Rollins
A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
Every girl wants songs written about her. Even the most hardened tattoo-covered punk rock girl would love a nice ballad written for her. — Eef Barzelay
I've played death metal, punk rock, hardcore, funk... I've done it all. And all there really is music and at the end of the day, anybody who has a record and puts out a record that's basically the same song 13 times over on one record; to me they're just cheating the fans. — Cristian Machado
The boys in the office preferred Daft Punk and the song "Robot Rock" as an anthem, speaking excitedly and without irony about wanting to become robots one day. That made me wonder: Why? What's the pull of being a robot? — Katherine Losse
Art is how we decorate space; Music is how we decorate time.
I started playing guitar when I was in eighth grade, and that led to trying to write songs and trying to figure out how to play in bands. That led to meeting people, and getting into the local punk rock scene, and going to shows. So that was how I really got into the culture of it. — Chris McCaughan
The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll. — Gerald Caiafa
Punk Rock Quotes
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. — Barack Obama
If a man can tell if he's been successful in his life by having great friends, then I have been very successful. — Johnny Ramone
And it's a - it's a term that's based on contempt; it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, satanism, and, everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll. — Iggy Pop
A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.
I got tired of the Ramones around the time I quit and I really got into rap. I thought it was the new punk rock. LL Cool J was my biggest idol. — Dee Dee Ramone
DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!' — Thurston Moore
This hair has a reputation of being stereotypically punk rock, and I'm the girliest person you'll ever find so it took a while for me to figure out how to convey my style. I never wear black very often anymore, all the colors I wear are extremely soft and lovely. — Ariana Grande
People are like Music, some speak the truth and other are just noise
Punk rock really came out of N.Y. as a philosophy before the groups were ever recorded. I had a kind-of intellectual interest in the idea of creating a new scene that could be a grassroots thing. — Greg Ginn
Punk rock will never die, until something more dangerous replaces it. — Jello Biafra
Triple 6 Mafia and Mystikal in Atlanta was one of my first shows. I remember how sweaty and smashed up everybody was, and it was so punk rock. — Yelawolf
I encourage you to find your punk-rock, your lucha-libre, your pro-wrestling — Amy Dumas
Rock Music Quotes
Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there. — David Bowie
People don't run out of dreams - people just run out of time. — Glenn Frey
Don’t you love the Oxford Dictionary? When I first read it, I thought it was a really really long poem about everything. — David Bowie
Music is the emotional life of most people.
A kid once said to me "Do you get hangovers?" I said, "To get hangovers you have to stop drinking. — Lemmy Kilmister
But life is just a party, and parties weren't meant to last. — Prince
Everybody started calling my music rock and roll, but it wasn't anything but the same rhythm and blues I'd been playing down in New Orleans. — Fats Domino
One good thing about music. When it hits you, you feel no pain.
Rock and roll is about having a good time, so no matter
where you are right now blast some music and forget
about lifes problems. — Andy Biersack
It's gotta be rock and roll music, if you wanna dance with me. — Chuck Berry
Trying to explain music is like trying to dance architecture. — Thelonious Monk
My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity. — Eric Clapton
I was the only punk rocker at my high school. And there were at least a handful of black kids who liked hip-hop. Both were kind of the new music of the day, and it was lonely being the only punk. — Rick Rubin
Once you free your mind about the concept of harmony and of music being correct, you can do whatever you want. So nobody told me what to do, and there was no preconception of what to do. — Giorgio Moroder
Seeing Taylor Swift live in 2013 is seeing a maestro at the top of her or anyone's game. No other pop auteur can touch her right now for emotional excess or musical reach - her punk is so punk, her disco is so disco. The red sequins on her guitar match the ones on her microphone, her shoes and 80 percent of the crowd. — Rob Sheffield
My drawing came out of editorial-style cartoons. Music was one thing and art was another, and there weren't really any standards for my art. My work was just drawings. They weren't done with any aspirations of becoming a part of punk scene. They weren't about punk. They were just collections of drawings, some of which I xeroxed and sold. — Raymond Pettibon
Noise has taken the place of punk rock. People who play noise have no real aspirations to being part of the mainstream culture. Punk has been co-opted, and this subterranean noise music and the avant-garde folk scene have replaced it — Thurston Moore
Well I listened to mostly rock music, and I felt like hip hop was like an extension of rock music when it was done well. So energetically, again I felt like it was in line with punk rock and maybe hard rock, more than it was in line with R&B, which I never really liked. — Rick Rubin
It’s always this thing where we’re constantly waiting for something that will come in electronic music that says, ‘Daft Punk sucks!’ That’s actually much more interesting and exciting than someone who is paying homage. — Thomas Bangalter
A guy walks up to me and asks, "What's Punk?". So I kick over a garbage can and say. "That's punk!". So he kicks over the garbage can and says, "That's Punk?", and I say, "No that's trendy! — Billie Joe Armstrong
My dad took me to all the best rock and punk shows when I was growing up and music has always been a part of my life. So I'm very interested in the music scene and I suppose that's why I've ended up going out with musicians. Dave Pirner is still one of my best friends. — Winona Ryder
Style has always been very important to us. We grew up in the '70s. Music was glam rock, punk rock and a very stylish movement. — Nick Rhodes
Rap actually comes out of punk rock, not black music. — Stanley Crouch
From the beginning, there was so much pressure in the early San Francisco punk scene for everyone to be different than everyone else, to flaunt your intelligence and insights instead of every band sounding alike, like what plagues punk music in particular today. — Jello Biafra
Punk rock and skateboarding took the 'school' out of living your life, and I related to learning as I went, doing a lot of different things that I liked, when I liked. Consequently, I'm mediocre at all of the above, but still stoked on being a lifetime student of music, skating, painting, writing, etc. — Jeff Ament
To me, rockabilly music paralleled punk's energy and feeling, but the players were much better. — Brian Setzer
I think one of the most important things punk brought back was the whole concept of staying independent and doing things yourself. It made music a lot less boring in any category you can name. — Jello Biafra
Punk's influence on music, movies, art, design and fashion is no longer in doubt. It is used as the measurement for what is cool. — Malcolm Mclaren
When you're thirteen and listening to punk, the aggressive nature of music can sway you to the dark side. — Dave Grohl
I wanted to be in a punk band before I had even heard any punk music. — Kurt Cobain
Punk's really cool because it's very inclusive of all types, which I like. And I would submit that even though people talk about punk as being thuggish, I think it can be more creative than other types of music. — Milo Aukerman
I have found myself deeply, deeply intrigued by the ska-punk scene. It's such an expressive form of popular music, it's so real, it's got so much life: it's the most vital music in the world. — David Bowie
Johnny Rotten isn't punk. Maybe that's punk to somebody, but these people are participating and challenging the corporations that are telling us what punk is and what good music is. — Kathleen Hanna
I enjoy punk, the attitude as well as the music, but I don't feel like I have to be a carbon copy of it and invite all this controversy, just to be punk rock. — Hayley Williams
When it comes to electronic music, I started listening to a lot of Daft Punk, way before I knew what house music was, and then progressed into a lot of Steve Angello, Eric Prydz, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Laidback Luke. — Avicii
In high school I was in a band called Goodfight, but it was more me running around on stage. It was very punk inspired. Then I started to get into indie-rock and older music and decided I wanted to write my own stuff. I quit the band. Around 16 or 17, I started recording myself at home on keyboard and piano. — Angel Olsen
I feel that people who are new to punk/hardcore don't truly understand the music and the role it plays in people's lives until they experience the environment for themselves. — Jacob Bannon
When I was growing up, I really liked punk rock. I liked the sort of people that played really powerful music that was pretty unassuming otherwise - people who didn't dress weird or do much theatrics. — Doug Martsch
When punk came along, I found my generation's music. I grew up listening to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd, 'cause that was what got played in the house. But when I first saw the Stranglers, I thought, 'This is it.' — Robert Smith
There weren't a lot of career opportunities in crazy-fast hardcore punk, so you didn't have a lot of ambition, just the love and passion to play music with your friends. — Dave Grohl
I was a fan of heavy music - first metal, then punk, then hip hop. — Tom Morello
My whole view of music completely flipped over on its head. I grew up listening to punk rock, SST. I liked people that were making music that weren't necessarily very good at their instruments, it was more about the ideas they had than how well they could play and sing. — Doug Martsch
Punk-rock gave music back to people. For a long time, when I was very young, I went to go see arena rock bands. I was 16 and it was all I could get in to see, legally. And I saw Led Zeppelin and Ted Nugent and Van Halen and all that. Me and [Minor Threat and Fugazi vocalist] Ian MacKaye would go to these concerts, and it was fun. — Henry Rollins
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