The History of Power Pop

Published: Aug. 6, 2020, 11:58 p.m.

b'In the beginning\\u2014and I\\u2019m talking about, say, 1955\\u2014it was easy to categorize popular music\\u2026there was rock, pop, country and r&b\\u2026it was nice and simple\\u2026pretty much all mainstream music you heard could be dumped into one of these four buckets\\u2026\\n\\nBut even back then you could get more granular\\u2026you could slice certain genres into thinner slices to include big band, Dixieland, Ska and hillbilly\\u2026and jazz\\u2026and gospel\\u2026and Broadway show music\\u2026and I guess we can\\u2019t leave out classical, can we?...\\n\\nAnd as rock\\u2019n\\u2019roll grew, it fragmented and separated and stratified with each passing year\\u2026before long, it wasn\\u2019t enough to say that you were in a \\u201crock band\\u201d\\u2026you had to specify what kind of rock band you were\\u2026\\n\\nIn 2014, a guy named Glenn McDonald created a project called \\u201cevery noise at once\\u201d\\u2026he was able to identify 1,264 micro-genres of popular music\\u2026and new micro-genres are being invented every day\\u2026every hear of blackgaze or deep filthstep or skweee?...they exist\\u2026trust me\\u2026\\n\\nSome of these genres rise and fall pretty quickly\\u2026they\\u2019re \\u201cof the moment\\u201d and soon sound completely outdates\\u2026others, though, have staying power\\u2026they can be with us for decades\\u2026why?...because they just work, that\\u2019s all\\u2026\\n\\nAnd one genre that\\u2019s been working very well for over half a century is called \\u201cpower pop\\u201d\\u2026this is its story\\u2026\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'