I became a fan of Power Pop very early on; Beatles, The Who, Badfinger, the Guess Who, like that. My young love for the stuff peaked in the late '70s with Cheap Trick; their album Heaven Tonight (1978) is a platonic ideal of Power Pop in my book. So a version of Beatlesque remains a constant to this day in my affection for the stuff but with a few formal refinements to the prototype formula. Ringing guitars are good but more important than whatever instrumentation is the uptempo insistent and urgent (with the occasional heartbreaker slow one) Mod or rocker-like '60s tempos; The Shoes, The Records, The Bangles, The Veronicas, all still power pop. To be honest, I often find a lot of latter day power pop, neo-Power pop or Pop Punk, too formulaic. But it's still power pop. Power pop doesn't have to have a British accent for me either; although an accent, say, Big Star's Memphis drawl does add welcome flavor. My bare minimum for power pop rests on vocal group harmonies, even if mostly the creation of studio multitracking. I want a group of voices blended together in big chorus harmonies and sing-along hooks. Power pop has to have stacked vocal group harmonies and be semi-fast or hard; not hard like hard rock hard but hard like a Jolly Rancher. So important are the harmonies that they often put over otherwise by-the-numbers 1980s-1990s neo-power pop like this Redd Kross single from their album Phaseshifter (1993). It's those bubblegum sweet rave-up harmonies. Still works for me.
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