power pop

Power pop is a subgenre of rock music and a form of pop rock based on the early music of bands such as the Beach Boys, the Beatles, the Byrds, and the Who. It typically incorporates melodic hooks, vocal harmonies, an energetic performance, and cheerful-sounding music underpinned by a sense of yearning, longing, despair, or self-empowerment. The sound is primarily rooted in pop and rock traditions of the early-to-mid 1960s, although later examples sometimes draw from punk, new wave, glam rock, pub rock, college rock, and neo-psychedelia.

Power pop developed mainly among American musicians who came of age during the mid-1960s British Invasion. The term was coined in 1967 by the Who guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend to describe his band, the Small Faces, and earlier Beach Boys and Beatles records, although its wider application followed early 1970s releases by Badfinger, the Raspberries, Big Star, and Todd Rundgren. The movement reached its commercial peak during the rise of punk and new wave in the late 1970s, with Cheap Trick, the Romantics, Nick Lowe, Dave Edmunds, and Dwight Twilley among those enjoying the most success. After a popular and critical backlash to the genre's biggest hit, the Knack's 1979 song "My Sharona", record companies generally stopped signing power pop groups, and most of the original bands dissolved.