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
Power pop is a state of mind.
At least that's what I tell myself.
I’ve never been too strict about policing the genre’s borders, which means as long as a song embodies at least some of the foundations of “traditional” power pop—strong melodies, hooky surprises, and/or straight ahead formalist cohesion—I think you’re in the clear to use it as freely as your feelings lead you to.
I love a lot of musical styles, but power pop is probably my home base as a listener.
As a kid, songs by The Cars, The Knack, and ELO caught my imagination.
Later in my teens, I found myself drawn to groups and songwriters who took that cherished sound and made it feel modern: artists like Weezer, Matthew Sweet, Candy Butchers, Teenage Fanclub. As I got into record collecting, I gravitated to power pop forefathers like The Beatles, Todd Rundgren, and early genre pioneers like Badfinger, Nick Lowe,Raspberries, and Cheap Trick.
By my 20s, I was working in a record store, which gave me access to so much more music than I’d ever had, and my penchant for digging into power pop deep cuts dovetailed right alongside my headfirst exploration of other sub-genres, like drone metal, free jazz, dub, and avant-garde music.
Those other sounds thrilled me and expanded my mind, but when I’d discover a lesser known power pop group (like those heard on Numero Group’s Yellow Pills comp) I felt a familial sensation—like was “coming home” as a listener.
For my “Is It Power Pop?!” selections, I tried to focus less on stringent definitions and more on the feeling power pop inspires. I hope you enjoy these songs as much as I do.
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“Love Is Gone” by Carlene Carter
You won’t find this one labeled power pop on streaming services, or even filed under “rock” for that matter. And while there’s no denying the twang that courses in her vocals (and Carter Family DNA), Carlene Carter’s 1978 self-titled debut record is awash in power pop bona fides. Backed up by soon to be husband Nick Lowe and The Rumour, on loan from Graham Parker, “Love Is Gone” is as crystalline and chiming as anything by Big Star or even Tom Petty for that matter. File this Brinsley Schwarz-style groove and knockout vocal under Pure Pop for Y’all People.
“Starry Eyes” by The Records
The platonic ideal of “power pop”: utterly hooky, with windmill power chords, and sharp lyrics that hover between swoony and disillusioned at the same time. Add in laser gun guitarmony solos and a fade out that suggests the song rings out forever across the cosmos, and you get a song that feels like it’s always playing somewhere, in some technicolor dimension of sound. The original single version is best—and the version that was issued in the US—but the UK album cut version by Mutt Lange isn’t bad either.
“I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” by Prince
The extended psychedelic jam on this Sign o' the Times hit might disqualify this one to some ears, but for a few minutes there, this one exemplifies what Kenneth Partridge called in Billboard a prime example of “paisley power pop.” As I noted in my intro, I tend to think of power pop as more of a mode or mindset, one that can easily incorporate diffuse influences (think of Big Star’s ability to wed Memphis soul and R&B flourishes into their more Anglophile style rock, or Marshall Crenshaw’s Buddy Holly worship, or numerous other examples) and few artists shape shift into different modes more than Prince did. Pair with the Prince-written Bangles jangle classic “Manic Monday.”
“Precious To Me” by Phil Seymour
There are so many phenomenal Seymour or Dwight Twilley songs to pick, but there’s just an undeniable, and unabashedly sentimental, charm to this 1980 pep ballad. The way Seymour shifts his vocal into overdrive for the chorus never fails to get me. “Why would you wanna hurt me/When I love you, baby, can't you see?” Eternally relevant. Seymour sadly died too young, but his songs live on in the hearts of many a hapless romantic.
“The Main Attraction” by Redd Kross
One in the tradition of Chris Bell’s immaculate “I Am The Cosmos,” where power pop sonics meet metaphysical speculation. I love the “as above, so below” occult symmetry of this 2024 Kross kutt, and the way brothers Jeff McDonald and Steve McDonald can take mystic wisdom and make it rock. Even as they’ve flirted with metal, jangle pop, grunge, and many other stylistic detours, a deep and abiding love for “power pop” music and family runs like a line through their vast discography.
Previously On “Is It Power Pop?!”
Is It Power Pop?!
This is a guest post series featuring some of my favorite music writers and musicians. We’ll be sharing a new installment every few weeks or so (while supplies last). Full series here.
I'd never heard that Carlene Carter song before. Prince as a power-popper? I can dig it.
"Main Attraction" by Redd Kross is one of my favs by them. It's practically an opus!