Title The Top of the Poppers sing and play punk Type Article URL https://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/id/eprint/14980/ Dat e 2 0 1 9 Citation Bestley, Russ (2019) The Top of the Poppers sing and play punk. Punk & Post Punk, 8 (3). pp. 399-421. ISSN 2044 1 9 8 3 Cr e a to rs Bestley, Russ Usage Guidelines Please refer to usage guidelines at http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/policies.html or alternatively contact
[email protected] . License: Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Unless otherwise stated, copyright owned by the author The Top of the Poppers sing and play punk Russ Bestley, London College of Communication By the mid-1970s, the music industry had a long history of accommodating and recuperating teenage rebellion, and punk’s defiant message of radical change also offered new opportunities for commercial enterprise. A rush to sign new bands who could be (broadly) associated with punk, and the concomitant shift toward ‘new wave’ styles, led to a degree of UK chart success for a number of groups. The inclusion of punk and new wave songs on a series of low-budget compilations featuring cover versions of contemporary hits strikes a particularly discordant tone with punk’s self-styled image of a break with traditional music industry conventions. The albums released on the longstanding budget compilation series Top of the Pops between mid-1977 and early 1982 tell an interesting story about the cultural recuperation of punk, new wave and post-punk, and ask questions, perhaps, about the legitimacy of punk’s often mythologised ‘outsider status’.