Power pop is a popular musical genre that draws its inspiration from 1960s British and American pop and rock music. It typically incorporates a combination of musical devices such as strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements and prominent guitar riffs. Instrumental solos are usually kept to a minimum, and blues elements are largely downplayed. Recordings tend to display production values that lean toward compression and a forceful drum beat. Instruments usually include one or more electric guitars, an electric bass guitar, a drum kit and sometimes electric keyboards or synthesizers. While its cultural impact has waxed and waned over the decades, power pop is among rock's most enduring subgenres.
Read more about Power Pop: Characteristics, Formative Years: Mid 1960s Through The Early 1970s, Commercial Peak: Late 1970s To Early 1980s, Contemporary Power Pop: 1980s To 2000s, Festival Bills, Books and Internet Resources, Notable Power Pop Singles
Famous quotes containing the words power and/or pop:
“There is a power whose care
Teaches thy way along that pathless coast,—”
—William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)