Iggy Pop has performed his once-obscure track “Punkrocker” live for the first time.
Originally a 2006 collaboration with Swedish trio Teddybears, the song has experienced a resurgence, thanks in part to its inclusion in the latest Superman film. Pop performed the track live for the first time at Portland’s Project Pabst Festival (as per Rolling Stone). “Superman is the best friend you could have,” Iggy Pop recently said responding to the prominent use of the song.
The song’s newfound popularity is largely attributed to its prominent placement in the film’s final scene. In Superman, a conversation between Kal-El, played by David Corenswet, and Lois Lane, portrayed by Rachel Brosnahan, highlights the notion that “kindness is the real punk rock”. This sentiment is echoed by the film’s writer and director, James Gunn, who mentioned in an interview with Rolling Stone that he first discovered “Punkrocker” through Spotify’s algorithm.
“And so when I wrote that line, I think I thought back to that song and knew that would really work well,” Gunn told Rolling Stone. “And I just liked how the ending juggled all these different pieces of the movie in a way where we showed that the real punk rock was him, his dad, all the way to the shot of the dad making the baby fly. He flies because of his parents.”
The film’s end credits also featured another nod to punk rock with a song by the fictional band Mighty Crabjoys. This pop-punk anthem, co-written by Gunn and Foxy Shazam’s Eric Nally, adds to the film’s musical landscape. Gunn recounted the swift creation of “The Mighty Crabjoys Theme”, noting how it took mere minutes to compose and record a rough version before Nally transformed it into its final form.
“I literally wrote that song and sang it into my phone the first thing in the morning,” says Gunn. “It took five minutes, and then Eric turned it into the fun song that it is.”
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