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 Bijan (Pop Rocks Radio)
A tour of the borderlands.
Funny how a whole world can be thumping beneath your feet, but if you aren’t tuned into the rumble, you chalk it up to background noise. Maybe a subway, even if your town doesn’t have one.
I grew up in Spokane, Washington—mullets, keggers, kids arguing about Rush albums—straight out of Stranger Things. My mom loved Barry Manilow, and my dad loved Perry Como. I was once forbidden to go to a Loverboy concert on the grounds that it would lead me to a life of crime.
So I nestled into FM pop radio: top-40 bubble wrap.
And that’s how I ended up buying Different Light in 1986 because I liked The Bangles’ hits. But tucked on side two of that beautifully crafted pop album was the song “September Gurls,” and something in it hit me sideways. Those harmonies, that guitar lift—it felt like someone had cracked open a door to a room I didn’t even know was in the house. I didn’t realize the song was a cover because I had never heard of Big Star, but the lyric sheet gave the copyright date: 1974.
That’s when I realized the rumble I’d been feeling was the hum of an entire universe I just didn’t have the map for yet. My journey began by trying to catch up on all the music that happened while I was still busy with Andy Gibb and Olivia Newton-John (still love them both, by the way).
I realized the songs that hooked me didn’t all come from one genre.
Some were punk, some garage, some indie, some just gloriously weird. But they all had that something—the riff, the harmonies, the hook that burrows into your brain.
They weren’t always “power pop,” but they were power pop adjacent—standing right at the border, waving this giddy fanboy in.
This is a brief tour of those borderlands.
Give the algorithm a piece of your mind!
“You Tore Me Down” by Flamin’ Groovies
I first picked up Shake Some Action because the band’s name cracked me up. Then I dropped the needle on the title track and got that familiar power pop sensation: How have I not heard this before??? The glorious guitar riff slides into something of a revelation.
But I’m choosing “You Tore Me Down” because it’s the song that shook Bomp! Records into existence—a seismic event, the impact of which I don’t think the world still fully appreciates. Of my list, this is the most undeniably power pop, with Paul Collins putting a fine point on it with his killer version on his 2010 album King of Power Pop!
“It’s Cold Outside” by Stiv Bators
When punk bands and power pop bands weren’t stealing each other’s riffs, they were swapping wardrobes. Ramones could casually fire off “Rockaway Beach,” Shoes would close Present Tense with “I Don’t Wanna Hear It,” and no one batted a darkly lined eyelid.
After the Dead Boys imploded, Stiv Bators set out to prove he was more than just his legendary punk antics. He recorded this single, along with what became his first solo album, Disconnected (1980), for Bomp!, taking The Choir’s chiming garage classic and roughing up the edges.
Fun fact: When Bomp! released Stiv’s L.A. Confidential in 2004, two songs by an entirely different band—Crowbar Salvation—accidentally landed on the album because they were recording in the same studio at the time. Indie chaos, Greg Shaw-style.
“Now or Never Mind” by Artful Dodger
Artful Dodger lived in that mid-‘70s no-man’s land where power pop felt a little lost at sea. Along with the Groovies, Dwight Twilley Band, The Quick, and Milk ‘N’ Cookies, they kept the bonfires lit on the beach, trying to guide the rest of us home.
Dodger was a rock band at heart, but with a melodic compass that kept pointing toward power pop. Their debut was produced by Jack Douglas, the guy who wrangled Aerosmith and helped usher in future America’s Greatest Rock Band, Cheap Trick. Artful Dodger and Honor Among Thieves are stone-cold classics, and their fourth album, Rave On, is wall-to-wall should-have-been hits that somehow never were.
“Out There” by Blake Babies
And then…the twitch sets in. The longer you spend in power pop circles, the more you develop a twitch. Suggest an unorthodox song, and you immediately duck to avoid the “you can’t be serious!” that comes flying back. To that end, I offer Blake Babies’ “Out There.” Is it safe to come out yet?
In the ‘90s, indie rock was the main beneficiary of brushing up against power pop or the victim of it—opinions vary depending on how many Lemonheads albums one owns. In a sea of wonderfully “proper” power pop artists: Matthew Sweet, The Posies, Material Issue, Jellyfish, Blake Babies wandered in with their slacker charm and walked it hand-in-hand with power pop down college-town avenues across America.
“Sad Girl” by The Stems
“One, two, three, fawr!” may have kicked off one of the greatest rock songs ever and launched a thousand bands wanting to be The Beatles, but for me, the scream at the beginning of The Stems’ “Sad Girl” did the same. And while it’s not as power-poppy as some of their other hits (see: “At First Sight”), this track finds Dom Mariani and Co. deep in the land of Garage-Janglefuzz, delivering everything I love: a song that’s tight, efficient, and completely built around the hook.
Bijan Marashi runs Pop Rocks Radio, creating videos to shine bright on the margins whenever he can. Not an expert, just a fan…
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 had no idea Stiv covered It's Cold Outside so this was a welcome surprise. Also wonderful to see Artful Dodger get some love. I stumbled onto a 45 of Think Think and that was all I needed to know 1) I loved them and 2) they were power pop.
Love where this writer is coming from. Great shouts for Flamin' Groovies, Stiv Bators, and Cheap Trick being America's greatest rock band. As always in these, haven't heard of a lot of them, so looking forward to it.