In the Seventies as Rock got heavier, it also got less melodic. Led Zeppelin may have been the biggest band of the '70s, but with only a handful of exceptions, their music wasn't really known for memorable melodies. It was all about the heavy guitar riffs.
Unfortunately, the pop charts didn't offer much of an alternative. Whereas Sixties pop had led a creative charge as The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, The Kinks, and others expanded the intellectual and musical palette of rock and pop music without losing any of its melodic and harmonic inventiveness, by the beginning of the Seventies, the majority of pop bands littering the radio waves were wispy and lightweight.
However, a few early Seventies bands -- most notably Badfinger, The Raspberries, and Big Star -- attempted to marry the tunefulness of the Sixties with the heavier sounds of the Seventies. Specifically, the music of these POWER POP bands was full of Beatles, Byrds, and Beach Boys melodic and harmonic influences accompanied by crunchy guitars and power chords. (A few years earlier Pete Townsend had described The Who's music as Power Pop.)
Nonetheless, despite a modicum of commercial success, Power Pop pretty much died from public view by the mid-Seventies.
But then in 1975 The Ramones and The Sex Pistols came along, and the chaos of Punk ensued, followed in short order by New Wave; i.e., punk-influenced music that was more pop-oriented (see: The Talking Heads, The Cars)
And, surprisingly, bubbling under the Punk & New Wave scene came a new generation of power pop bands who, in addition to resurrecting the hook-laden sounds of original early '70s power pop, also incorporated the aggressiveness of punk. Although these new power pop records only scratched the bottom of the charts, they were significant enough to establish a New Underground Era of Power Pop that exists to this day.
Here are four that you should know about:
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