[Ads-l] "hardcore" (punk subgenre)

[Ben Zimmer]

The OED3 entry for "hardcore" (June 2015 revision) has this as noun sense 4:

---
Originally North American. Any of various forms of popular music (often a
variety of an established genre) regarded as particularly uncompromising,
extreme, aggressive, or experimental; (in early use chiefly) a particularly
fast and harsh form of punk.
---

The earliest example given is from a 1978 article referring to "Jamaican
hard-core" in the context of reggae, not punk music, and the first
punk-related cite is from 1984. Here's an early cite for the punk subgenre,
in an article about bands from Vancouver.

---
Calgary Albertan, Feb. 24, 1980, p. 31, col. 1
James Muretich, "Riding the Crest of New Wave"
Over the years the punk/new wave scene has evolved three main styles which
encompass nearly every band playing: hard-core, pop and art punk.
https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-calgary-albertan-hard-core-punk/181713213/
---

While that usage might be construed as an adjective modifying "punk," it's
followed by a subhed with "Hard-Core" on its own, so I think that supports
reading it as a noun. The article goes on to describe bands like D.O.A.
("the local kingpins, being mainly responsible for waking the city from its
musical slumber with music like an armed assault") and the Subhumans
("another one of the early hard-core, politically oriented bands").

D.O.A. would go on to title an album "Hardcore '81" (released in April
1981), which the writer Steven Blush credits with kicking off the genre
label, though it was clearly percolating in the Vancouver scene for more
than a year before that.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170809212902/http://greenroom-radio.com/2016/03/02/what-is-hardcore/
cited by Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcore_punk

--bgz

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