(Credits: Ki Price)
Mon 29 December 2025 0:00, UK
Unless you were as immersed in the scene as much as Chrissie Hynde, it’s unlikely that you’ll understand why punk is the most misunderstood genre in music history.
To the unsuspecting outsider, it was nothing but a loud subculture based on anti-establishment aggression, and the music was just mindless noise that sought to cause a ruckus for no reason other than to be antisocial and anarchic. Many of its haters also felt it suffered for all the same reasons that counterculture did, and that it claimed to fight for a better society, but didn’t actually do anything to try to achieve it.
To those on the inside, that was half right. There was aggression involved, of course, but hardly ever without reason. And those who understood what it was actually about knew that it was far more than just a means to kick back at everything people were annoyed by. In essence, it was a gateway to self-expression in its purest form.
As Kurt Cobain once put it, punk wasn’t just about anarchy; it was about freedom. “Punk rock should mean freedom, liking and accepting anything that you like,” he once said. “Playing whatever you want. As sloppy as you want. As long as it’s good and it has passion.”
Chrissie Hynde shares a similar view. According to Hynde, punk wasn’t just freedom in the musical or professional sense; it was about being completely and unapologetically yourself, as well as uniting with people who wanted to support and lift the oppressed. Which, for a woman in music, was completely priceless, especially since many female musicians couldn’t gain respect elsewhere, in other, more mainstream circles.
Punk, on the other hand, allowed them to be freer in how they presented themselves and the people they associated with. For Hynde, it was the freedom not to have to pitch herself or explain why she was there, because she already had the respect to be able to do all of that. Of course, the community wasn’t perfect, and sexism didn’t magically disappear the moment you decided to become a part of the mayhem.
But for the most part, it was a space where people like Hynde could thrive. As she explained to The Independent when asked if punk was a boy’s club, “Not at all. In fact, what punk was about was non-discrimination. And that’s why I started trying to get a band together, because I knew that it wouldn’t be a novelty that I was a chick. It was like, ‘Oh, you can play the guitar, let’s get together.’”
Taking the opportunity to set the record straight, she continued, “And it wasn’t about sex either, which was really refreshing and interesting. I mean, people had sex, but it was referred to as a ‘squelching session’. It was impersonal. You weren’t really having relationships. Johnny Rotten would come over to my squat and he would spend the night, but there was never anything sexual going on. It probably wouldn’t have been very hard to convince me! But he wasn’t into it, you know?”
Hynde lived up to the punk mantra in many ways. Beyond being a foundational female figure in rock, she has always been one of the more straight-talking figures who can call it exactly how it is. Maybe that comes from hanging around with people from bands like the Sex Pistols, or perhaps it’s from growing a thick skin under the spotlight. Either way, it proves she lived the punk ethos as though she created it herself, knowing full well that it was anything but fake.
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