> That is just an objectively wrong worldview—that Punk was just fashion and a mostly dull, amateur genre.
It was dull and amateurish and "not very good" if you take "good" to mean the intricate, virtuoso, polished mainstream music that punk forcefully rejected.
Also "smartest genre of music" is a stretch. You'd have to justify that in dimensions beyond music, like its impact on society/culture. The pinnacle of musical achievement cannot be 3-chord music.
I agree that difficulty isn't a virtue, and I'm a big fan of minimal art and music, but I don't think 1-4-5 power chord music is the pinnacle of musical achievement. But I think those simple songs were extremely powerful in their cultural context and the rejection of norms that they represented.
That said, though, a lot of what is considered "punk" today abandoned those simplistic song structures of the 60s lo-fi/garage/protopunk (Stooges, MC5, Sonics, etc.) and started doing intricate and musically-complex studio productions. Including the band "Wire" which the comment I was replying to hails as a high achievement of punk.
It was dull and amateurish and "not very good" if you take "good" to mean the intricate, virtuoso, polished mainstream music that punk forcefully rejected.
Also "smartest genre of music" is a stretch. You'd have to justify that in dimensions beyond music, like its impact on society/culture. The pinnacle of musical achievement cannot be 3-chord music.