I assumed we’d get to Nuggets when I posed the question, but to me at least there has to be a significant melody for something to be pop as well as power. The Choir’s “It’s Cold Outside,” from 1966, is essential power pop.Īgree that “Louie Louie” is in the bloodline, but not exactly power pop. IMHO.īut speaking of the overlap, Stiv Bators in 1979 did a cover version of a song called “It’s Cold Outside,” from the short-lived Cleveland group The Choir–whose lead singer, Eric Carmen, of course went on to form Raspberries, probably the greatest power pop group of all time. But otherwise the Kingsmen’s record (based of course on the Richard Berry & The Pharaohs original, which was calypso-flavored R&B from Los Angeles) is pure atavistic garage or proto-punk rock–which often overlaps with power pop, but not here. (They were also covering a lot of the same classic rock ‘n’ roll as the Beatles, like “Too Much Monkey Business” and “Long Tall Sally,” and it’s all freaking terrible the Kinks were only ever good at original material.) If I’m really listening, I see the influence of “Louie” on the British groups as being entirely limited to the fast, savage guitar break. I love “Louie Louie” but I can’t see it as power pop, even though you can hear it in “You Really Got Me,” and even though the Kinks did their own, really, really bad, version of it. You could also make an argument that some of that first heavy metal is basically just “Ticket to Ride” slowed way, way down, and sluiced through with blues but I don’t know why you’d want to. That still sounds plausible to me, though anyone can come up with “heavy” records predating those the point is 1968 seems like an agglomeration point, the year a real genre was born. The narrative has usually been that heavy metal started sometime in 1968, the year when Blue Cheer released Vincebus Eruptum Iron Butterfly blessed us with “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” Steppenwolf released their first two albums and Jimmy Page, who’d briefly marshaled the remnants of the old Yardbirds as the New Yardbirds, formed Led Zeppelin. But who cares, I find it every bit as dynamite today as I did on first hearing it, when it was less than a decade old I can only imagine that makes it as dynamite today, or very nearly so, as it was the day it was released. But it was far from the first power popper, and so has no real “pioneering” placement. “Ticket to Ride” is absolutely power pop, in fact it’s still a definitive example.
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