If you want to fast track your understanding of theory practice these exercises relentlessly:
https://www.teoria.com/en/exercises/Do the interval ear training and practice calling out the relative melodic intervals in songs.
Do the chord/seventh chord/extended chord ear training so you can hear inversions of chords and learn to de-conflict the notes and hear them seperately - so you'll recognize e.g. an A7 third inversion and won't get confused by the G being the lowest note in the chord
Then, do the harmonic progressions and increase the difficulty incrementally and you'll start to get a feel for keys and tonal center, practice calling out the degrees of music you like (important) if its punk it will probably be I-IV-V so maybe try and branch out to something complex if that's the case.
After woodshedding all this stuff, listen to music and analyze it with what you've learned, play along with a midi controller/piano VST and get a feel for what techniques are employed. You need relative pitch to git gud and not just rote memorization, the ears have to dictate what the instrument or software plays, don't get confused by the physical feel of a guitar fretboard, hear the notes in your head first and know where to play them on your instrument.
Also good music is literally all about rhythm, good simple vocal melodies in classic popular songs are to do with some strange hidden code of rhythm. My homebrew music theory is if the vocal melody starts on the downbeat it's focused/determined, if its on the second 8th note of the bar its like some inhaling or hesitating, to tell you something with urgency, if it starts on the second quarter note it's relief/acceptance and a bunch of other weird shit that's not a rule but I swear there is a correlation between lyrical content matching where the start of the melodic phrase is which makes it more pleasing.