One of the things I hate is when I meet someone at a party and the talk gets around to music, and you ask “What kind of music do you like,” and they inevitably reply “Oh, all kinds” when in fact you can be sure they don’t actually like all kinds, they mostly like, oh, I don’t know, Kid Rock or something, and they don’t even have all of Kid’s Rock’s albums, they’ve got like one album and the rest of the stuff they’ve heard on the radio. Well me, I do like “all kinds”, or certainly a lot of different kinds that aren’t necessarily connected, and the first I’m going to talk about here is one of my favorites this week, power pop.
There’s a lot of definitions of power pop, but to me the most obvious things are: 1) It has a hummable melody, 2) it’s got krunchy guitars as well as (sometimes) pretty strings, 3) it’s got “hooks” that make you remember the song, 4) it’s usually about love in some shape or form (as opposed to being about, say, James K. Polk, which is more under the realm of hyperintellectual smart-guy pop like They Might Be Giants or XTC, and better discussed in a separate post), and 5) it’s often told from the perspective of the one who’s the loser, not the winner.
Oh, and the other thing I love about power pop – structure. Pop songs are like sonnets, and they confirm to a defined pattern: Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. That’s the way it always has been since the dawn of time, and the way it always shall be. Amen. (It may seem like a “simple” idea, but trying writing one yourself–it’s nowhere near as easy as it looks. (It helps if, like me, you were in bands and wrote songs yourself).
The latest power pop masters these days are Fountains Of Wayne, who have a new CD of outtakes(most of which I already have) that shows off all these excellent qualities. Listen to their new hit, Maureen — it’s catchy, it’s krunchy, it’s rockin’, it’s sad cuz’ the guy loves the girl but she thinks of him as just a friend while she’s sleeping with every guy in town. It’s awesome!
Every truly great power pop group adds a little something of their own to the mix, and for me what FOW have is a certain wistfulness about their songs, which are often written from an adult’s perspective of younger person’s life. It’s from the younger person’s point of view, but the way certain details are chosen, really shows things in a different light.
Next up on Brad’s favorite music: Honky tonk country and western, weird foreign pop music, “outsider” noise music, and classic jazz standards. But first – Beyonce!
