This is a guest post series about power pop featuring some of my favorite music writers. We’ll be sharing a new installment every few weeks or so (while supplies last). Full series here.
Is It Power Pop?
By Teddy Grey (of the band Twerp, formerly Wifey)
Even in a post-genre world, “power pop” seems particularly hard to pin down.
If The Beatles, KISS, Weezer, The Jam, Jimmy Eat World, and Hanson can all have cases made for them as belonging to the same genre, I’m not even going to attempt to come up with a strict definition.
The only common denominators I can think of is that to be power pop, you have to have great melodies and you have to play guitars. I think that’s all it is. Oh, and it helps if you’re a loser. And a nerd. And you’ve been known to drop phrases like “pop craftsmanship” in casual conversation.
Power pop seems to come from an innocent enough place: “Hey, everyone loves catchy choruses and everyone loves guitars, so surely if we put those two things together, we’ll be a hit!”
The logic behind it makes sense.
There’s no reason to think that picking up where The Beatles left off should be anything but a surefire way to success. And yet, this is a genre that is dominated by doomed, cursed, utterly luckless bands.
It’s a genre mostly consisting of wide-eyed, optimistic teen pop about big dreams, pretty girls, and shiny cars, yet 99% of it is produced by tragic, miserable figures who couldn’t catch a break with a net the size of Greenland.
Once I learned that, I knew power pop was the genre for me.
Truthfully, I never set out to write power pop, or even considered my songs as being part of the genre. But after the one millionth person says to you, “Hey, this reminds me of Fountains of Wayne,” you start to think, “Huh, I guess my band is power pop.” But it’s a moniker I proudly embrace, because really, this is the type of music that I love the most.
If I had known of the power pop curse, maybe I would’ve gravitated towards writing in a different style (like confessional bedroom pop, those bands seem to be doing pretty well), but I guess you are who you are. And even though you can’t read the stories of bands like Badfinger, Big Star, Material Issue, Fountains of Wayne, or The Exploding Hearts without wanting to walk into the ocean, their music still makes me so happy.
And music is more important than people. So I say power pop forever.
“There She Goes” by The La’s
I belong to a small but vocal club that believes “There She Goes” is the greatest guitar pop song ever written. The central melody is perfect, which it has to be because the whole song is basically just that refrain repeated 5 or 6 times. I love it when a song is so confident in its chorus that they don’t even bother with writing a verse for it.
The La’s might be the biggest waste of potential in the history of music (I like speaking in absolutes). They’re not like other one-album-wonders like The Sex Pistols where you feel that any additional records would have been redundant. Lee Mavers wasn’t even close to saying all he had to say, and it hurts to know that a man with a McCartney-level gift for melody never got it together and gave us more. Thankfully, this song, “Timeless Melody,” “Looking Glass,” “Feelin’,” and others haven’t dimmed after thousands of listens, and I’m sure they’ll hold up for thousands more.
“Game of Pricks” by Guided By Voices
Sometimes I think most of my favorite bands are just versions of The Beatles from alternate universes. Oasis is The Beatles if Bob Dylan introduced them to coke in 1965 instead of weed. And Guided By Voices is The Beatles if they were a group of midwestern alcoholics who only had access to a four-track. It’s funny how even after writing thousands of songs, most people seem to be in agreement that this one is Pollard’s best. I could make a Top 100 GBV list without breaking a sweat, but there would never be any question what song would be at the top. “And I’d never ask for the truth, but you owe that to me.” Unbelievable.
“I’ve Been Waiting” by Matthew Sweet
Obviously it’s important right now to give Matthew Sweet his due as one of the greats. Girlfriend is on a short list of the best power pop albums of the ‘90s, but it probably took me two years to check out the full thing in earnest because I just could not get past this song. It has everything I could ever want out of a lead guitar part—melodic, jangly, memorable, helps the song reach its full potential without showing off or getting in its way. It’s genuinely one of the most played tracks of my lifetime. When my evil streaming service of choice rolls out my Top 100 Most Played at the end of every year, this is always, always there, usually higher than it was the previous year.
“Where I Find My Heaven” by Gigolo Aunts
I watched Dumb and Dumber last night and was reminded of how absurdly good this song is. Farrelly Brothers movie soundtracks are greatly underrated as a source to find power pop gems. This is one of those cases where a band has one impossibly perfect song, and then you scour their discography looking for another one that even comes close, only to find that, yes, they did use all their good ideas on that one song (see also: Nine Days’ “(Absolutely) Story Of A Girl,” Lit’s “My Own Worst Enemy,” and Ashlee Simpson’s “Pieces of Me”). But I suppose it’s better to have touched perfection once than to write a dozen mediocre-to-decent tunes.
“It’s A Shame About Ray” by The Lemonheads
The Lemonheads beg to be underrated. I remember listening to this album for the first time at 14 and thinking, “Yeah, that was good.” It just seemed that an album with multiple songs under two minutes—let alone ones like “Ceiling Fan In My Spoon”—was not going to have the staying power for me of the “classic” records I was immersing myself in at the time. Yet 13 years later, I have never, ever stopped listening to it, which is more than I can say for Dark Side of the Moon. The album whiplashes from white-knuckled restlessness to woozy melancholy, but it all feels warm and comforting, and the title track is one of the highlights. Evan Dando will forever be one of my favorite rock fuck-ups, and the doubled-acoustic/doubled-electric sound he got on this album will always be something I’m trying to emulate.
Remind the algorithm that Remember The Lightning exists!
Teddy Grey is a New York-based singer/songwriter, actor, and writer. He currently fronts the power pop band Twerp (formerly Wifey). He also released the 30-song concept album The Great Failed Romances of the Twentieth Century, and performed in the first national tour of The British Invasion. He and wrote, directed, and starred in the cult movie Garfeld: the Musical (A Garfield Parody).
Previously On “Is It Power Pop?!”
Is It Power Pop?!
This is a guest post series about power pop featuring some of my favorite music writers. We’ll be sharing a new installment every few weeks or so (while supplies last). Full series here.
I wish to debunk the "Gigolo Aunts have just one classic song" theory. "Cope" is my all-time favorite of theirs, and "Mrs. Washington" is gorgeous, too. Plus, I actually prefer their cover of BMX Bandits' "Serious Drugs" (borderline blasphemy from a Norman Blake uberfan, I know)...
Really liked the Wifey song.