GO ALL THE WAY – A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO POWER POP.
(check out our new ‘Go All The Way: Power Pop’s Greatest Hits & Misses’ playlist on Spotify)
The Raspberries – Go All The Way
"Pete Townshend coined the phrase [power pop] to define what the Who did. For some reason, it didn't stick to the Who, but it did stick to these groups that came out in the `70s that played kind of melodic songs with crunchy guitars and some wild drumming. It just kind of stuck to us like glue, and that was OK with us because the Who were among our highest role models. We absolutely loved the Who." - Eric Carmen, The Raspberries
"Power pop is what we play…what the Small Faces used to play, and the kind of pop the Beach Boys played in the days of 'Fun, Fun, Fun' which I preferred." – Pete Townsend, The Who, 1967
From the Who and the Small Faces to the Beach Boys is a fair stretch, even though Keith Moon was a massive surf music fan and led the band through a version of ‘Barbara Anne’ in The Who’s ‘The Kids Are Alright’ movie. (And 'Bucket T' is a Jan & Dean cover). But it’s a stretch that does suggest the tunefulness and punchiness – call it ‘meaty, beaty, big and bouncy’ if you will (Pete did) – and the absolute FUN that lies at the heart of one of rock’n’roll’s most maligned and misunderstood sub-genres.
The Who – Bucket T
Indeed, not only is power pop maligned and misunderstood, it’s also something that most people have never heard of. Unless you read the right music magazines or listen to the right specialist radio, you’ve probably never heard of it. It’s something that exists on the margins, or perhaps more accurately in the spaces between other genres. A Venn diagram (most power pop fans will know what that is because they tend to be a bit nerdish) might have it in that point where ‘60s-style pop and hard rock and/or maybe punk rock overlap. But fans of any of those related genres may well hate it if they do recognise it, and if they don’t recognise it, it’s hardly surprising when you consider that even the power pop cognoscenti themselves can't agree on a definition or exactly what music does and doesn't qualify. And some people may actually love some of it and not even know what people are now calling it, because much of the music upon which the genre was built existed for years before the genre was acknowledged anyway.
The term 'power pop' is believed to have originated from Pete Townsend’s off-the-cuff description of his own band that we’ve quoted above. It wasn't til a decade later however that the term re-emerged, thanks to the late Greg Shaw, one of a handful of mostly Californian music writers who spend the early years of the '70s championing a 'pop revival' before latching upon Townsend's term. In 1977, Shaw applied it to a style of music that he saw as being the logical and more commercial successor to punk, and he went looking back to the ‘60s and early ‘70s to establish that it was a pre-existing thing. The Easybeats and the work of Vanda & Young in general were at the core of what Shaw was looking at, and he linked what they did to what his favourite bands of the punk era were doing. In Shaw’s mind power pop was pop with real power – the power of the new punk movement harnessed into music that could have the broad appeal of the ‘60s pop he loved. Melody, dynamics and energy were key.
Greg Shaw’s Bomp! Magazine
Shaw’s boosting of power pop in the immediately post-punk era gained a lot of traction, especially in the UK where it was seen by marketers and more commercially-minded journo’s to be next thing after ‘new wave’. A host of Merseybeat-style bands appeared, only to be shot down mercilessly by the hard-minded critics who had seen punk not as some sort of back-to-basics movement, but a year zero-type sweeping away of everything that had come before.
A couple of years later over in LA, along came the Knack. Whilst inspiring a signing frenzy that saw anything with a skinny tie snapped up by the record companies, the Knack smelt of hype and were loathed my many. Virtually every band that was noticed in their wake – most of whom who had actually been around longer than the Knack – were ripped to shreds. Only the Romantics – who Greg Shaw had previously released on his Bomp! Records label - had any longevity. Shaw at this point perhaps wisely shifted his attention to a purer ‘60s revival, and ushered in another retroactively-named genre – ‘garage rock’ – with the release of his ‘Pebbles’ series of compilations.
The Romantics – Tell It to Carrie
Power pop was a dirty word from that point on. It went underground, only to rear it’s Beatle-wigged head every so often into the mainstream, or the mainstream alternative. For a while in the ‘90s some people (here in Australia at least) started applying the name to melodic modern punk bands like Green Day, which may have seemed appropriate if power pop was ever going to be something that expanded stylistically. Or if it’s name wasn’t dirt. It didn’t stick. At the same time certain strains of American college rock (the post R.E.M.- jangle strain and the goofier Weezer/Fountains of Wayne strain) were also given the tag; with Fountains of Wayne at least the tag seems to have stuck.
More recently, a whole host of older bands - the sort of bands that Greg Shaw might’ve described as ‘pop revival’, but who he wouldn’t have considered ‘power pop’ (Shaw didn’t even consider Badfinger to be power pop) - are squeezing in under the umbrella. Especially from the early-to mid ‘70s – anyone with a Beatles influence now seems to find a spot, even if that influence is more ‘Abbey road’ than ‘Please Please Me’. Terms like the ‘soft power pop’ – how’s that for an oxymoron? - have been bandied about.
Interestingly a number of the bands that Shaw championed, including the Jam and Generation X from the punk set, and Vanda & Young’s early ‘70s studio project Marcus Hook Roll Band, rarely make the power pop lists anymore, perhaps because they stray from what are now seen as core tenants of the genre. Nope, not even the guy who initially codified the whole thing could get his way.
For the few exclusions though there have been plenty of inclusions, and what has come with this new open ended definition of power pop though is a new respectability. The term’s association with obscure early ‘70s crate-digger fare – something that possibly began with the dark romance of the story around long-time power pop faves Big Star, as well as the home-made private-press nature of the early Shoes records - has seen the term finally finally have positive connatations for those outside of the core fan base. There’s also the late ‘70s/early ‘80s stuff’s association with more quirky ‘new wave’ material – a lot of which is remembered more fondly in hindsight. Power pop is no longer the term of derision that it once was, and hip young labels like Burger Records and HoZac are actively working in the field.
The Shoes – Okay
Big Star – September Gurls
And what of my own take on what the genre actually entails? ‘From the Who and the Small Faces to the Beach Boys’ certainly applies, but I’d throw in the early Beatles – and earlier progenitors including Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, early Motown and Brill Building stuff, all of which was obviously loved by the Beatles and the Who – and shift it all to the ‘70s. An emphasis on melody and beat above all else is key, but ‘70s sonics are crucial too. ‘60s pop is ‘60s pop – power pop is ‘60s pop through a ‘70s looking glass, and for me, even modern power pop needs to still have something of the ‘70s about it. It’s a bit louder and harder than the ‘60s stuff. It’s there in the harder rocking Raspberries, Big Star and Cheap Trick numbers which define the genre. It’s there in the Flamin’ Groovies super-charged ‘Shake Some Action’, and it’s there in the classic Badfinger singles ‘No Matter What’ and ‘Baby Blue’, even if a lot of their stuff is more late Beatles inspired. Which is melodic but not pop. It‘s there in contemporaries of the Knack like the Beat and the Plimsouls, and there’s a definite ‘70s crunch in the classic work of ‘90s power pop contenders like Teenage Fan Club, Jellyfish and Redd Kross.
Cheap Trick – Surrender
Badfinger – No Matter What
Whilst bigger genres like ‘rock’ and ‘pop’ (which, in the context of power pop is of the ‘60s beat variety) have always encompassed a wide range of styles and evolved inevitably, power pop is similar to other narrow sub-genres like rockabilly, ‘60s garage rock and girl group music. Like power pop, these sub-genres were given a name and a code of conduct after they’d fully formed, and their names imply quite specific elements. In some ways that makes all these genres more like museum pieces than living, breathing and GROWING forms. New entries to the cannon are thus more like new studies or examinations of the existing form, and that’s exactly what modern day power pop is. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be interesting and fun.
And power pop is nothing if not FUN!
Stay tuned for part 2 in our Power Pop Piece that will look at power pop from Down Under! Here’s a sample of that - the fabulous Innocents with their classic single ‘Sooner or Later’.