The Best 50 Powerpop Albums according to RYM

Uh, he didn't even answer the question. (And I'm into both.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWfYLrN5a08

A quick list of some of my favorite power-pop songs, as I understand the term--where I'm coming from, as Stevie Wonder might say:

1. "Girlwish," Fudge (1991)
2. "Not Me," Shoes (1977)
3. "Another Girl, Another Planet," Only Ones (1978)
4. "Mannequin," Wire (1978)
5. "Any Other Way," Posies (1990)
6. "Consider Me Gone," Jellystone Park (1991)
7. "Big Blue Bus," Stupid Cupids (1987)
8. "I'll Be There," Windbreakers (1985)
9. "Shake Some Action," Flamin' Groovies (1976)
10. "Southern Girls," Cheap Trick (1977)
11. "Oh, Grateful," James Dean Driving Experience (1987)
12. "Completely," Seaside (1991)

I've bypassed the '60s, because there's too much thinking involved if I don't.

Btw, realize I'm trying to reason with an nitwit (and in the words of one of these guys, the point is probably moot), but John Waite, Rick Springfield, Bryan Adams, and 38 Special did all regularly compose their own songs.

And--even though there's probably a touch too much (very fine) soloing--a big Spinal Tap shout-out to the most perversely unlikely great power-pop song I know: Wishbone Ash's "Blowin' Free" from '72.

5. "Any Other Way," Posies (1990)

this may be my 5th favorite song period

It's an amazing song. 1990 is the one year out of the last 40 I didn't pay much attention to music--I was at teacher's college--but if I had been, and if I'd somehow stumbled over it (unlikely--didn't catch up to it till five or so years ago), it would have topped my list for the year easy.

This a singles genre...but that said, aside from the Big Star albums, which are kind of in a universe by themselves, the best start-to-finish classic power pop album I can think of is Rockpile's Seconds of Pleasure. Phil Seymour's self-titled would be it were it not for the last two tracks. The '90s and '00s are another can of worms.

The whole premise of a really specific '60s foundation for power pop doesn't settle well with me. I was just looking at the Wikipedia article on power pop. Interestingly, there is no mention of the Byrds whatsoever. I kind of get the idea of forming a genre around Monkees/Beau Brummels/Knickerbockers/Easybeats/Outsiders. I'm just not sure 1) how relatively powerful these bands were, and 2) how relevant this lineage is to the development of power pop in the '70s. It's like these bands are being identified specifically because they were maybe somewhat innocuous and that's seen as a general power pop trait.

The thing is, the Raspberries were a powerful band. I think the term "power pop" is meaningful and see the Raspberries as a bigger genre archetype than Badfinger.

Do some people actually care about the Outsiders, uh, outside of "Time Won't Let Me"? I had no idea. Just finally got rid of the LP with that song on it a few days ago, becuase the rest seemed completely, well, generic -- some okay covers, some forgettable originals, nothing else that much ever grabbed me at all. (Just checked Whitburn; surprised to learn they actually had four Top 40 singles, all in 1966.)

I can definitely see the Monkees as frequently proto-powerpop, though, now that you've mentioned them. (And "Friday On My Mind," too.)

Beau Brummels ("Don't Talk to Strangers" and "When It Comes to Your Love") and the Monkees ("A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You," "Take a Giant Step," and at least a couple others) fit into my definition, for sure. My head's starting to spin...with Beau Brummels we're at the intersection of power-pop and jangly, early psychedelia. "Jangle-pop" might in fact be a better description of at least half of what I listed above, except jangle-pop also leads you to a lot of mopey Smiths-like British stuff I don't care for. (I burned and filed an Outsiders singles compilation recently; outside of "Time Won't Let Me," nothing caught my ear at all.)

I think there's something extra-musical involved in the definition of power pop. Ironic distance? Low self-esteem? There's a beautiful loser aspect to it. Great power pop albums wind up in the cutout bin, where they develop cult reputations. That's why people are on the fence about Cheap Trick, John Waite, 38 Special, etc. Power pop wants to sound like it should have been a hit. Once it actually becomes a hit, it's something else. (Exceptions abound, of course -- "Go All the Way" etc.)

I'd never thought of that before...excellent. Maybe that help explains, in part, my attachment to the Shoes; they were a case study in shoulda-been, with lots of sad, lingering evidence in Goodwill dollar-bins everywhere. (I mean, not that much evidence--no one bought their albums!)

And by now there are definitely a heck of a lot more 38 Special and Rick Springfield LPs in Goodwill dollar bins than Shoes LPs!

Surprised to hear somebody pick that Rockpile LP as the great powerpop album over, say, the two Nick Lowe solo ones that preceded it. I used to have a copy; thought "Teacher Teacher" was passable, I guess. And now that I look at the track list, I guess I remember "If Sugar Was As Sweet As You." But that stuff always struck me as pretty compromised and just plain phoned-in compared to Labour Of Lust, Pure Pop, and a bunch of '70s Edmunds LPs. Maybe I'll revisit it sometime.

Btw, can I mention how great the first Cretones albums is? Okay, just did. Been talking about them a lot this year over at Rolling Hard Rock.

And speaking of current country powerpop, I thought "Truck Stop In The Sky" on the debut album by Flynville Train a couple years ago sounded a lot like Rockpile. (Listening to it now, I'm also thinking NRBQ is a reference point. They covered the Beatles' "Baby's In Black," too.)

"I'll tell ya right now -- it's gonna be bigger than the Paisley Pop Pop-A-Thon last year in Des Moines. And it's definitely gonna make January's Popadelphia Pop Nation fest look like Poptopia 2002. What a disaster that was, huh?"

There's a beautiful loser aspect to it.

Actually, I had thought of that...Here's something from my rejected 33-1/3 proposal for Black Vinyl Shoes five years ago:

"A story of prophets without honour. This is where Lost Highway comes in--much as Guralnick caught Charlie Rich still pursuing some semblance of a career years after his one brief flirtation with success, three-quarters of the group that made Black Vinyl Shoes was still at it in the early '90s, putting out new material on their own record label and reconfiguring older albums for CD release. Why? For whom? Pop music had passed them by a few dozen times in the intervening years, but they hadn't changed a bit."

Yeah, but all musical genres have their beautiful loser lifers who never stop plugging away, because they love it and they don't know anything else. Powerpop (and the Shoes) are hardly alone in that boat.

So Clemenza, what's your appraisal of Un Dans Versailles, the Shoes album before Black Vinyl Shoes? Or was that just a myth?

I own a rip of Un Dans Versailles, and it's really ahead of so many curves -- but still not overwhelming on first listen.

I just think there's something that especially resonates about a failed power-pop band, for the reason Thus Sang Freud pointed out: "Power pop wants to sound like it should have been a hit." I'm not sure that a band like the Shoes were quite so fatalistic about what they did, but I do think that a lot of the best power-pop was made by people who were pursuing what they thought was the perfect pop song, perhaps tracing back to their earliest memories of the Beatles or whatever, even though some part of themselves was resigned to the fact that it wasn't going to be received by AM radio and the rest of the world that way, for whatever reason. I don't think a failed metal band, or a failed indie band, would resonate in the same way. I admit to a pronounced bias.

I don't have Un Dans Versailles...I've read of it; not sure if it's out there or not. I do have Bazooka, demos (I think) that preceded Black Vinyl Shoes by a year--maybe they're one and the same. There are three songs on it I love, but knowing your general indifference towards the Shoes, I can't see that you'd find it any more rewarding than Black Vinyl Shoes.

Re: Rockpile sounding phoned in...I can hear that, there's something about the Edmunds and Lowe sound that just works for me. Jesus of Cool and Labour of Lust are accomplished albums but tracks like "They Called It Rock" are just as phoned-in as anything on Seconds of Pleasure and I can't get into the country songs on Labour.

As many of you have noted, the power pop archetype is the sad, lonely guy making really pretty music. (And maybe this is going too far, but the archetypal power pop FAN is a lonely guy who escapes into pretty music.) The fact that the power popper doesn't hit it big despite making something beautiful feeds into the loneliness and powerlessness and gives the music added punch. When the artist DOES hit it big, he turns into just another pop star and his likely one chart song into just another cheesy hit that people who don't understand sing along to. Listening to "Stacy's Mom" would be a far different experience if the video hadn't told the story for us and your fellow audience were limited to the people who have every Jason Falkner album.

And like clemenza says, there's a certain timelessness to it all. It's not easy defining power pop or pinpointing its exact origins, but there's an emotional and aesthetic link between Chris Bell, Shoes, the Raspberries, Tommy Keene, Marshall Crenshaw, Teenage Fanclub, Game Theory, Jellyfish, the Grays, Fountains of Wayne, the Wondermints, Matthew Sweet, and God knows how many other artists. Perhaps it's as simple as everything going back to Big Star jangle and Raspberries power-schmaltz.

I didn't mean to bump a general discussion of pwer pop per se, but since I did, a long time fave:

(1975) The Rubinoos - Gorilla

(And maybe this is going too far, but the archetypal power pop FAN is a lonely guy who escapes into pretty music.)

Ouch--too close to home. Unfortunately, there's much truth there.

And, yeah, to be super-pedantic, I've divided my power pop collection into these categories:

1.) Early Beatles Influenced
Badfinger, Raspberries, Todd Rundgren, Wings, Blue Ash, Artful Dodger, etc.

2.) Flamin Groovies & Big Star Related
including: Prix, Bell & Chilton solo, etc.

3.) New Wave Power Pop
Shoes, The Dwight Twilley Band, The Pop, The Quick...everything through Tommy Tutone, The Plimsouls, The Cars

3a.) Not Quite New Wave
A hodgepodge where I throw the debut Tom Petty, pseudo-Rockabilly revival like Robert Gordon and Moon Martin, Billy Joel's Glass Houses, and, hell, even BoC's Buck Dharma's 1982 solo (he did write "I'm Burnin' For You"!)

4.) 80s College Rock and Jangle
Begining with the early Chris Stamey projects (Sneakers 1976 ep), through all the Squeeze/XTC/Game Theory/etc., and way too much Richard X. Heyman and Spongetones for most people's comfort.

4a.) Paisley Undereground
Kinda self explanatory here.

Wings = Beatles-influenced...great!

Where would pub rock power pop like Bram Tchaikovsky, Brinsley Schwarz, and the Motors go? Rockpile, Edmunds, and Lowe would probably be in the same slot whatever it is.

Categories 3 and 3a are clearly my favorities. Very little use for categories 4 and 4a, though I'm a very big fan of Cool For Cats.

In what way are Big Star and Flamin Groovies alike? (Not being snotty; I just mainly love the Groovies for their earlier, hard rocking stuff, circa Teenage Head and Flamingo; maybe the reason that their later powerpop stuff never hit me is the same reason that I've never really gotten what was supposed to be so great about Big Star.)

Anyway, PappaWheelie's post reminds me that there's also been plenty of discussion of Artful Dodger, Moon Martin, and the Pop* on the Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock Threads the last two years. Feel free to search:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2009

* The Motors too, I think.

I just didn't want to have searate slots for inidvidualk bands, so groovies and big star kinda got lumped.

I have most of my (limited amount of) Pub Rock in 3a

Blue Ash and Artful Dodger (along with the Tom Evans post-Badfinger band "Dogers") have all gotten plenty of play from me.

So where does that leave all the '90s-00s power-pop like Bandwagonesque, Utopia Parkway, and the first two Weezer albums? Or would those be more "pop punk" than anything?

I (lazily) have left it all with '90s indie, but being I'm a massive fan of 3 Sloan albums (that I can't seem to ever stop playing), I've been tempted to create a separate folder (especiallky since Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend has become a fave again).

Friends, dig my list of a baker's dozen uncelebrated, yet rocking power pop tour de forces. If you like good music, you would be wise to pick up what I'm laying down for you.

Perfect Youth - The Pointed Sticks (1980)
I Can Walk Alone - The Human Switchboard (1981)
History Never Repeats - Split Enz (1981)
The Trains - The Nashville Ramblers (1986)
Dear Friend - Flying Color (1987)
Lady In The Front Row - Redd Kross (1993)
To Fulle Menn - Jokke (1995)
Sittin' Pretty - Brendan Benson (1996)
Good Day To The Night - Myracle Brah (1998)
Vertigogo - Frisbie (2000)
Swim - The Glands (2000)
Don't Call Me Dear - The Fairways (2004)
Blankest Year - Nada Surf (2005)

There's a load of great powerpop being made at the moment, which sells in bulk, but I suspect lots of powerpop adherents wouldn't accept it as such (because it's not made by 30something men with a firm grasp of rock history), and the people buying that music wouldn't even recognise the concept of powerpop. It's the stuff being put out by Hollywood Records - Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez et al (large chunks of the Gomez album are written by Gina Schock). It's powerpop of the new wave variety rather than the 60s variety, but indisputably powerpop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQnSOZBe-yg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5ceIIjlzP8

4.) 80s College Rock and Jangle
Begining with the early Chris Stamey projects (Sneakers 1976 ep), through all the Squeeze/XTC/Game Theory/etc., and way too much Richard X. Heyman and Spongetones for most people's comfort.

I know this is usually counted as powerpop by powerpop fans, but it really doesn't ring with me. I think, partly because the sound aesthetic of guitar based music of that late 80s era (lots of reverb, vocals mixed very low in the sound) just doesn't fit into what powerpop has otherwise been about. I also know many powerpop fans reckon that the 80s were generally an era that didn't really have powerpop around, and that powerpop didn't really come back until the likes of Jellyfish, Posies, Matthew Sweet and The Lemonheads revitalized the genre in the early 90s. (And Teenage Fanclub although arguably they weren't really powerpop until the "Thirteen" album, before that they were a somewhat more melody oriented shoegazer band)

Oh, and the likes of Miley Cyrus (not to mention Avril Lavigne) are obviously powerpop influenced, but. well.... the music is actually written by 30-somethings, but not performed by them. Powerpop songs are supposed to be performed by the people who wrote them.

So when powerpop bands do cover versions, they cease to be powerpop bands? Wow. That's one strict genre. No wonder only 14 people worldwide give a shit.

I've never really gotten what was supposed to be so great about Big Star.

What's not to like? They just had such an enormous musical palette, such a rich, baroque, sophisticated way of stringing chords together and fitting melodies over them, making them rock. So evocative too, like, you share their mindset as they were making those records. Beatlesque, in those respects, but also sui generis. It doesn't sound like the Beatles or Groovies or anyone else. Most power poppers fling major and minor chords together in some semi-random pattern, sing perkily and hope for the best. Sometimes they get lucky, but they rarely get that lucky. You can really go to school on Big Star; those records keep on giving. I think.

So when powerpop bands do cover versions, they cease to be powerpop bands?

There is a difference between the odd cover version, done out of respect for the original singer/songwriter act, and basing your career upon manufactured hits manufactured by professional songwriters who care more about $$$ that art.
That said, I still think Rubinoos did a misstep by making a cover version their first single, when their debut album was crowded with great original songs.

I take it the Kasenatz Katz stable does not fit in here?

That is Bubblegum. I sincerely hope that Geir does not now tell us what Bubblegum is and what it isn't and orders orders which must be obeyed at all times

So, Geir, what about Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs making those interminable albums of covers. Does that count as faithful homage, and therefore acceptable as powerpop, even though they are deathly records? While the Miley and Selena records, which are 30 times better, performed with absolute zip and commitment, are not powerpop.

Most of the acts you lionise on the boards ... they went into music to make $$$. Renounce the heretics!

http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/7155925/2/istockphoto_7155925-talking-to-a-brick-wall-diamondlypse-seattle.jpg

Well, I got a "Various Artists" album recently, and it's more like ? and the Mysterians, for the most part...

Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.
Power doesn't have anything to do with power pop.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro)

Geir will be along any minute to define what the Various in Various Artists actually means

What's not to like? They just had such an enormous musical palette, such a rich, baroque, sophisticated way of stringing chords together and fitting melodies over them, making them rock. So evocative too

Well, they've never rocked me. At all. Or evoked much anything, either. They mostly just hit me as restrained, I guess. And I can think of scores of '70s rock bands who -- to my ears anyway -- incorporated a wider scope of music. I think they're fine -- got a reissue CD of the first two albums last year, first time I'd listened to them in a long while, and they're still pleasant. "September Girls" is world-class pretty; I always thought that. But the albums have never "given" much to me. And fair or not, I guess I hold their status as Point A of powerpop-without-power (and their inflated reputation, compared to tons of '70s band who hit me as catchier and more deserving) against them.

Actually, I mentioned above that nobody would ever consider R.E.M. a powerpop band (despite playing melodic guitar music), but now I'm wondering whether there were, in fact, Big Star comparisons early on, when they released their first single and EP (which I like btw) -- They were Southerners, after all, playing an artsy, sort of introverted kind of pop. Doesn't sound powerpop to me, but I'm not everybody.

Powerpop songs are supposed to be performed by the people who wrote them.

Can you please link to the rulebook where you dig up these idiotic regulations? I'd love to see it sometime. Anyway, agree about Selena Gomez's album and some Miley counting as powerpop. Demi Lovato, too.

the power pop archetype is the sad, lonely guy making really pretty music. (And maybe this is going too far, but the archetypal power pop FAN is a lonely guy who escapes into pretty music.)

See also: What I said upthread about lots of emo being powerpop.

And oh yeah, I wanna second the nomination for Pointed Sticks, who were great. (A couple other Vancouver bands from the same time -- for sure the Modernettes, maybe the Young Canadians -- might also fit here.)

Interesting. I was watching a video of one of the Nickelodeon Youth recently & I had a strange thought: If this song had come out c. 1980 and they spent hours making their hair look like they never touch it except perhaps with a weedeater, this could be a cult powerpop item, not unlike Holly & the Italians.

Btw, just posted elsewhere this morning about a very catchy early Bryan Adams LP; interesting, in light of this thread, that the Rolling Stone Record Guide compared his sound then to the Byrds. (Tom Petty got that comparison a lot, too, obviously, and later so did R.E.M.! Also worth mentioning that Adams had a few years before been in the glam pop-rock band Sweeney Todd, with fellow Vancouverite Nick Gilder.) A permalink:

Rolling Past Expiry Hard Rock 2010

"Jangle-pop" might in fact be a better description of at least half of what I listed

Yeah, that's how I'd probably classify a lot of music mentioned on this thread in general. (R.E.M. included.) Guess it comes down to whether you prefer your powerpop jangly or crunchy. Nine times out of ten, I'll take the latter.

Crunchy sorta boogie rock was performed on occasion by Badfinger, Big Star, the Raspberries AND the Beatles!