The Best Power Pop Albums of the '70s

Ardent Records put it out through Stax distribution, which is the whole tragedy: the reviews were ecstatic and the records never reached the shops. Chris Bell and Alex Chilton split the writing and the guitars, and on In the Street you hear both at once, panned hard apart, one strumming while the other answers. Memphis made this, whatever the harmonies suggest.

Chris Bell had gone by the time the second one was cut, and Chilton's playing turns looser and stranger for it — the mixes lean sideways on purpose. September Gurls is the twelve-string everyone since has tried to copy, and the Bangles put their version on Different Light in 1986. Jody Stephens drums like tempo is a suggestion.

Rockford's finest hated Tom Werman's production enough that in 1997 they re-recorded the whole record with Steve Albini and let the results circulate unofficially. Judge for yourself: I Want You to Want Me is a barrelhouse piano shuffle here, nothing like the screaming Budokan version that became their American breakthrough two years later. Rick Nielsen's guitar sits politely at the back.

Apple Records, and a production credit that changed hands twice: George Harrison began the sessions, left for the Concert for Bangladesh, and Todd Rundgren finished the album. Day After Day sets Harrison's slide guitar against Pete Ham's vocal with Leon Russell at the piano, and it went top five in America. Spotify offers only the 2010 remastered deluxe edition.

Capitol shipped the debut with a scratch-and-sniff raspberry sticker on the sleeve, which tells you how seriously the label took Eric Carmen's ambitions. Go All the Way opens on a fuzzed hard-rock riff, drops into a chorus stacked with Beach Boys harmony, and reached number five in America while programmers fussed over the lyric.

Werman produced again and this time band and producer met somewhere useful — heavier guitars, songs still built like singles. Surrender is the argument for the entire genre: a chorus about your parents being all right, sung by four people, over changes that keep climbing when you expect them to settle. Spotify's edition adds two alternate takes at the end.

Dave Edmunds produced, partly at Rockfield in Wales, and the band turned up with Chris Wilson in place of Roy Loney — which converted a snotty rock and roll group into a jangle machine. Shake Some Action runs on twelve-string chime and a fade held far past politeness. Sire released it; 1965 British beat groups are all over it.

Shelter Records had already pushed I'm on Fire out as a single in 1975 and watched it climb into the American top twenty, then took a year to deliver the album. Slapback echo everywhere, Phil Seymour's high harmony welded to Twilley's lead, Sun rockabilly rebuilt with Beatles chords. Spotify carries only a remastered edition, dated 2011.

Mike Chapman, fresh from Blondie's Parallel Lines, cut this fast and cheap at Capitol's own studio, and the backlash arrived almost as quickly as the sales. My Sharona held number one on the Hot 100 for six weeks, and Berton Averre's closing solo runs longer than some of the songs around it. Border case: new wave by marketing.

Radar issued it in Britain under this title; Columbia lost its nerve in America and renamed it Pure Pop for Now People. So It Goes had already been Stiff Records' first single two years earlier, catalogue number BUY 1, and its descending guitar hook is shameless. Border case: Lowe came up through pub rock. Spotify's edition appends ten reissue bonus tracks.

Three of the four sides were played entirely by one man in the studio, Rundgren doing everything himself, with only the fourth cut live with a band. Couldn't I Just Tell You is the two and a half minutes every power pop group since has quietly robbed: chiming guitar figure, hard snare, no fat. Border case: a sprawling double album. Spotify spaces out the slash in the title.

Two Tulsa transplants, Steve Allen and Ron Flynt, moved to Los Angeles and signed to Portrait, a CBS imprint. Yellow Pills went on to name the fanzine and the reissue series that kept this whole genre breathing through the nineties, and the song is nervous downstrokes plus a chorus that arrives twice as fast as expected.

Beserkley Records, home to Jonathan Richman and Greg Kihn, signed these Berkeley teenagers and let them be unashamedly bubblegum. Their reading of I Think We're Alone Now charted in America in 1977, a decade before Tiffany's, and they play it straight: no irony, handclaps up front, harmonies stacked like a barbershop quartet that found amplifiers.

Cut in a living room in Zion, Illinois, on a four-track and self-released by the band on their own label, it sounds exactly like that — thin drums, guitars pressed flat against the tape. Boys Don't Lie is the one they re-recorded for Elektra two years later, and the homemade take wins; the harmonies wobble and the song is better for it.

Half the band walked before this one — Jim Bonfanti and Dave Smalley out, Michael McBride and Scott McCarl in — and Eric Carmen answered with the sharpest writing he ever did for the group. Overnight Sensation fakes a transistor radio mid-song, squeezing the mix to tinny mono before blowing it open again. Spotify drops the parenthetical Hit Record.

Chicago suburbanites who turned up a couple of years too early for the 1979 gold rush, and Spotify credits them as Pez Band, two words, with a remastered edition the only one on offer. Baby It's Cold Outside, no relation to the Frank Loesser standard, is two minutes of ringing downstrokes and a hook Mimi Betinis refuses to over-repeat.

Peter Bramall took the stage name after leaving the Motors, which explains why this record keeps drifting toward the pub-rock border. Girl of My Dreams cracked the American top forty on the strength of one ascending chorus and a guitar tone like a wasp trapped in a jar. Radar in Britain, Polydor in the States.