When Power Pop Goes Dark
Murderous, Malevolent & Murky Music...With A Good Backbeat
Power pop is all about tasty hooks, sweet harmonies, chiming/crunchy guitars, and beefy backbeats.
Lyrically, it’s best known for laments about love, lust and longing; unfulfilled dreams and unrequited advances; innocence and infatuation; broken hearts and bitter rejection; holding hands, walking home from school, and going to the dance.
But every once in a while the subject matter of a track that otherwise checks all the power pop boxes delivers a dark surprise. I was reminded of this recently after re-listening to Nick Lowe’s “Marie Provost” from his classic 1978 album Jesus of Cool (UK)/Pure Pop For Now People (US).
The song is based on the tragic end of a real-life silent movie star (as chronicled in Kenneth Anger’s infamous Hollywood Babylon). The body wasn’t discovered until neighbors called the police to complain about her dog’s incessant barking.
She’d been dead for a few days by that point (not several weeks, as Lowe’s song indicates), during which time the desperate pet nipped at its master’s legs in a futile attempt to wake her. Further following Anger’s lead, Lowe exaggerates how her corpse became the “doggie’s dinner” in this poppy paean to puppy love.
She'd been lyin' there for two or three weeks
The neighbors said they never heard a squeak
For hungry eyes that could not speak
Said even little doggie's have got to eat
That got me thinking about other power pop tracks that dwell in darkness.
Although he penned the perfect brokenhearted power pop song in “September Gurls,” Big Star’s Alex Chilton was no stranger to life’s shadowy corners. Third/Sister Lovers, the band’s last studio album during their original run in the ‘70s, is definitely their murkiest, but tracks from their two previous releases already veered in that direction.
“Daisy Glaze” from 1974’s Radio City provides a perfect example of this pronounced juxtaposition, especially in the second half of the song. What starts out as a lugubrious lament, explodes into a propulsive pop track, but a close listen to the lyrics leaves no room for misinterpretation of the singer’s malevolent mood.
And I'm thinking "Christ,
Nullify my life"
Nullify my life, ooh
You're going to die
Yes, you're gonna die
You're gonna die
You're gonna decease
New York could be a dangerous place in the late ‘70s and many of the city’s first wave punk bands didn’t shy away from singing about the pronounced depravity.
Although they would later become mainstream hitmakers with disco-tinged hits like like “Rapture” and “Heart of Glass,” Blondie first arrived on the national scene in 1976 with their poppy debut single, “X Offender.”
Originally titled “Sex Offender” (the title later changed in hopes of getting radio airplay), the song tells the sordid tale of a sex worker who falls for the police officer that arrests her. Co-produced by Richard Gottehrer, who first made his mark with ‘60s girl groups including The Angels (“My Boyfriend’s Back”), the track mixes those stylistic hallmarks with Debbie Harry’s edgy lyrics to create something danceably dark.
My vision in blue
I call you from inside my cell
And in the trial, you were there with
Your badge and rubber boots
I’m no purist when it comes to power pop, so I had to include this timeless (Punk? Psych pop? Rock and roll? Power pop?!) track by The Soft Boys.
Although it was released in 1980, this fierce anti-war rocker speaks to the existential geo-political threats we continue to face 44 years later. The track—one of the The Soft Boy’s most beloved releases—is uncharacteristically aggressive for a band whose sound ultimately owes more to Syd Barrett than Sid Vicious.
“We were all a bunch of very non-confrontational, uptight, middle-class kids…When everyone else was throwing beer glasses at the stage and putting safety pins through their noses, all we wanted to do was eat cucumber sandwiches,” Hitchcock has said.
The song’s lyrics paint a different picture.
And when I have destroyed you, I'll come picking at your bone
And you won't have a single atom left to call your own
This newsletter (and our semi-annual Guitar Pop Journals) were named after a track from 20/20’s debut album, but some of my favorite songs by that legendary band are from their under-appreciated 1981 follow up, Look Out!
Among them is “The Night I Heard A Scream” which appears to recount a hit-and-run fatality. Whatever happened, it has clearly left the singer—who maybe witnessed the vehicular tragedy?—totally shaken. And it’s all set to a bouncy keyboard line and jangly guitars with plenty of layered vocals.
Someone called a condition red
I felt policeman in my head
Blinding lights and sirens
Filled the night
I wonder why
No one’s ever explained
All that’s left is pain
In 2016, renowned music writer/author and musician Ken Sharp unleashed New Mourning, a whole album of undeniably hooky songs riddled with bleak lyrics.
With song titles like “Burn & Crash,” “Haunts Me,” “Bad News,” “LA Can Be Such A Lonely Town,” and, more pointedly, “The Worst” and “Loser,” this impressively inky collection truly lives up to co-producer Fernando Perdomo’s succinct description: “The feel-bad album of the year, but in a good way.”
Dynamite and kerosene
We’ll blow it all to smithereens, tonight
We’ll take it all to the extreme
And wash it down with thorazine, that’s right
More recently, I have fallen hard for Marquette, Michigan’s prolific indie quintet Liquid Mike.
Their 2024 album, Paul Bunyan’s Slingshot, is a masterclass in ‘90s influenced power pop, marrying the big, crunchy guitars of Blue Album Weezer (with a shot of Everclear) and the lo-fi songwriting approach of Alien Lanes-/Under the Bushes Under The Stars-era Guided By Voices.
The album’s release was heralded with lead single “Mouse Trap,” a rocking contemplation of what it means to chase the American dream in small towns these days. It’s less of a meditation on death than a few of the other songs above, but the imagery is no less bleak.
It kills me the most
The rain, the winter, the snow
It's almost not worth living
But I just don't know
I'll come back as a ghost
Just to haunt every house that you go
Here’s what Liquid Mike frontman Mike Maple had to say about writing that track when I interviewed him in January:
“I tried to make a really heavy sounding and sludgy power pop record and that song felt like the best introduction. …Sometimes it feels like your environment is trying to do everything it can to keep you stuck in place and unable to get away. It was the end of winter last year when I wrote that and I was especially moody at the weather.”
Mission accomplished. You’re in great company.
Thanks to the Power Pop Overdose Facebook Group for suggesting songs for this article.
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This is great, Steve! "Marie Provost" I'd forgotten about and it IS gruesome. lol.
That Liquid Mike record is one of the best of the year. I need to go back and listen to it some more!