GO ALL THE WAY: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO POWER POP
"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
The Raspberries – Go All The Way
"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 seems like a fair stretch these days, even though the Who did cover the Beach Boys’ with a version of "Barbara Ann" (and Jan & Dean’s "Bucket T") early on. But it’s a stretch that does suggest the combination of tunefulness and punchiness – call it ‘meaty, beaty, big and bouncy’ if you will (Pete did) – and the excitement that lies at the heart of one of rock’n’roll’s most maligned and misunderstood sub-genres: power pop.
The Who – Bucket T
Indeed, more than just a maligned and misunderstood genre, power pop is something that a lot of music fans have never even heard of. It’s kind of a specialist/niche thing - a music geeks’ genre. It’s something that exists on the margins, or perhaps more accurately in the spaces between other genres.
A Venn diagram (most music geeks will know what that is) might have it in that point where ‘60s-style pop and hard rock, and/or maybe punk rock, overlap. The fact that it’s a hybrid genre is what makes it so maligned and misunderstood, I think. A lot of ‘60s music fans don’t like it because of the hard rock or punk edge. A lot of hard rock or punk fans don’t like it because it’s too pop. And it’s also completely subjective; anyone coming to it from either direction might see it as a bastardisation of something they like, and even those who do love it can’t even seem to agree really on what the right balance is.
So if some people haven’t even heard of it, it’s hardly surprising…
Additionally, some people may actually love the music but have no idea that anyone has come up with a name for it. Because, as we shall see, much of the music upon which the genre was built existed for years before anyone but Pete Townsend called it power pop anyway.
Confused? It’s a confusing thing.
So yes, the term 'power pop' is believed to have originated from Pete Townsend’s off-the-cuff description of his own band’s music, as quoted above. It wasn't until a decade later that the term re-emerged, thanks to the late Greg Shaw, one of a handful of mostly Californian music writers who spent the early '70s championing a 'pop revival'. (Fellow critic "Metal" Mike Saunders used the term ‘light weight rock’ to describe the same stuff – you wouldn’t guess it but that was meant as a term of endearment.) Around 1977, Shaw latched on to Townsend’s term and applied it to a style of music which he saw as being the logical and commercial successor to punk, and he went looking back to the ‘60s and early ‘70s to establish a continuum.
The Easybeats and the work of Vanda & Young in general were at the core of what Shaw was looking at – as well as the Who of course, and the Move - and he linked what they did to what his favourite bands of the punk-era were doing. So all of a sudden everyone from Generation X and The Jam to Cheap Trick and the Ramones became power pop bands. And in the process of creating his continuum, Shaw added some of the earlier ‘70s ‘pop revival’ artists he’d been championing previously, bands like the Raspberries, Blue Ash and the Flamin’ Groovies. He saw them as the artists that bridged the gap between the ‘60s and the punk power pop era.
Greg Shaw’s Bomp! Magazine
In Shaw’s mind power pop was pop with real power; the sort of power that was back in vogue with the new punk movement. Shaw wanted to see it harnessed to music that could have the broad appeal of the ‘60s pop he loved. Melody, dynamics and energy were key. 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 journos as the next big thing after New Wave. A few Merseybeat-style bands appeared, only to be shot down mercilessly by the hard-minded critics who didn’t like the hype, didn’t like the retro aspects and who anyway saw punk not as some sort of back-to-basics movement (which is what Shaw and pals saw it as), but a year zero-type sweeping away of everything that had come before. Truth be told some of these bands weren’t too far from the Bay City Rollers in style – not exactly likely to be critics’ favourites. (Of course the Rollers have themselves long been seen as power pop fringe-dwellers.)
At the same time though, a genuine wave of new bands, primarily in the United States, one or two steps removed from punk, were making Shaw’s vision a reality. The Nerves, the Rubinoos and 20/20 on the West Coast, the Flashcubes and the Real Kids on the East Coast, The Romantics and the Shoes in the Mid-West. The Scruffs picked up where Big Star left off in Memphis, as would Southern transplants the Chris Stamey & the dB’s in New York. (Yes, power pop people knew about Big Star decades before they became cool.)
The Flamin’ Groovies were back at it (indeed Shaw had released a Groovies single on his fledgling Bomp! label to get them back at it), the Ramones were heading towards it and Blondie were sort of already there, and the Dwight Twilley Band, who’d seemingly come out of nowhere (Oklahoma) a couple of years earlier, looked like they might make it. (Their like-minded Shelter Records label mates Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers made it instead). Down Under we had Beathoven, who were Tasmania’s answer to Bay City Rollers, as well as Young Modern in Adelaide, and a band called Loaded Dice in Perth who combined their Beatles cover band roots with tough Aussie pub rock punch. Sydney had the Hitmen, featuring former members of Radio Birdman who’d caught the bug when touring with the Groovies in Europe.
The Scruffs - She Say Yea
The Romantics – Tell It to Carrie
20/20 - Drive
Loaded Dice - Mam’selle
In the UK an older generation - pub rockers like Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds, Eddie & The Hot Rods and former members of Ducks Deluxe (who formed the Motors, who in turn formed Bram Tchaikovsky) and the Kursaal Flyers (who formed the Records) were working on the same premise as Shaw as well. They would avoid the pitfalls of the power pop bandwagon jumpers by avoiding the term and just doing what they did best. Each was making great and successful records, some of which were the perfect embodiment of the power pop style. The Jags and Any Trouble would follow their lead.
American roots rockers NRBQ would similarly come up with their own instant power pop classic, "I Want You Bad". Even Bruce Springsteen, self-confessed Raspberries fan, was trying to write concise and punchy ‘60s-style pop rockers. He gave his best, "Rendezvous", to San Francisco’s Greg Kihn Band, and another, tougher number "Don’t Look Back" to LA up & comers the Knack.
Nick Lowe - Tonight
The Jags - Back of your Hand
NRBQ – I Want You Bad
Greg Kihn Band – Rendezvous
The Knack – Don't Look Back
The Knack were the band that fulfilled the power pop dream and nearly killed it at the same time. Whilst inspiring a signing frenzy that saw anything with a skinny tie snapped up by the record companies, they smelt of hype and were loathed by many. Such was the backlash that virtually every band that was picked up in their wake – most of whom had actually been around before the Knack anyway – struggled with credibility. Remember the ‘Knuke the Knack’ campaign? Only the Romantics – who Greg Shaw had previously released on his Bomp! Records label - had any longevity in the mainstream. (Even Shaw at this point gave up the ghost; he would have one final crack with the brilliant Plimsouls, who’d already been signed and dropped by a major in the wake of the Knack, before shifting his attention to a purer ‘60s revival, ushering another retroactively-named genre – ‘garage rock’ – with the release of his Pebbles series of compilations.)
Power pop was a dirty word from that point on. It went underground, only to rear its Beatle-wigged head every so often into the mainstream, or the alternative mainstream. The Go-Gos slipped through in the ‘80s, as did the Bangles, who covered Big Star’s "September Girls" on their massive second album. Our own Hoodoo Gurus were versed in it and could do it brilliantly when they felt like it (listen again to "I Want You Back"), and the Stems’ Dom Mariani excelled at it when he ditched the fuzz. The Smithereens were rooted in it, and Mitch Easter’s Let’s Active kept that quirkier Big Star side of things going in the South.
In the early ‘90s there was Scotland’s Teenage Fan Club, who were also massive Big Star fans; to the point that their Bandwagonesque album sounded almost like a homage. Illinois’ fantastic Velvet Crush were briefly TFC’s label mates on Creation and their pal Matthew Sweet had a couple of left field hits. But these were rare sightings.
The Bangles - September Gurls
Hoodoo Gurus - I Want you Back
And none of these bands ever called themselves power pop – that would’ve been the kiss of death. And so it continued. For the most part, at this point and for some years to come, great power pop artists, from the Infidels to Chris Von Sneidern to the Shazam, were strictly underground. 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 and Melbourne’s Bodyjar, which may have seemed appropriate if power pop was ever going to be something that expanded stylistically, or if its name wasn’t dirt. It didn’t stick anyway. At the same time certain strains of American college rock (the post R.E.M.-jangle and the goofier Weezer/Fountains of Wayne strain) were also given the tag; with Fountains of Wayne at least the tag did seem to stick. And maybe that’s when it started gaining currency again.
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 strayed 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 is – perhaps surprisingly - a new respectability. The term’s association with the now ubiquitously cool Big Star and eclectic singer-songwriter Todd Rundgren, whose magpie approach reflects the current crate-digger collector/fan mindset - as does the home-made private-press nature of the early Shoes records - has seen the term finally attain a positive image with those outside of the core fan base. There’s also the late ‘70s/early ‘80s stuff’s association with more quirky and/or cheesy ‘new wave’ material, a lot of which is remembered more fondly in hindsight and which is having a bit of a revival of its own.
Power pop is no longer the term of derision that it once was; young bands are playing it without taking the piss and hip young labels like Burger Records and HoZac are actively working in the field.
The Shoes – Okay
Big Star – September Gurls
As I said earlier, power pop is an incredibly subjective genre. So what do I personally think 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 elements of earlier progenitors including Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, early Motown and Brill Building stuff, all of which was obviously loved by the early 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, because the ‘70s was when power pop became a ‘thing’. ‘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.
In general the ‘70s were a bit louder and harder than the ‘60s, and brasher and less self-conscious than the ‘80s and ‘90s. These are the qualities 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 owes more to the more mature later Beatles stuff. Which is melodic but not really pop. It‘s there in the best of the Knack stuff and 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
So we’re winding up here, but one more thing needs to be said. Whilst bigger genres like ‘rock’ and ‘pop’ 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 primarily named and codified after the fact, and their names imply quite specific elements. All of these genres relate to musical styles that have effectively become frozen in aspic. Which really 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!
So check out our Go All The Way: Power Pop’s Greatest Hits & Misses playlist, which we’ll keep updating.
...and 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".
- DL
