Power-pop

Crow-barred in somewhere between pop-rock and post-punk, you’ll have the devil’s own job trying to nail power-pop down. Was it present in the early 70s cheery cheese of Raspberries and The Shoes? Did it begin with the glorious Big Star? Or perhaps Cheap Trick cooked it up in a toetapping moment of cheeky hilarity? Maybe it only really started with the new wave of big bang, heralded in by thos clever-dick college boys with severe side partings and too-tight jackets, The Cars? For the ‘power’ bit, do you include the Buzzcocks? Does the ‘pop’ part reach as far as Blondie? It’s all anybody’s guess. The Strokes might claim to be powerpop revivalists, but whose music are they reviving – The Knack? The Vibrators? 20/20?

Power-pop is a genre in which those at one end might have absolutely bugger all in common with those at the other.