Power Pop

Just when prog-rock took pop music to the outer reaches of scope and complexity, the Raspberries and Big Star peeled it back to its roots. With little more than a gorgeous melody, shimmering harmonies, and bored-out guitars, they gave us classics like "September Gurls" and "Go All the Way," kicking open the doors for Cheap Trick, Brendan Benson, and just about everyone in between.

Some of the greatest bands that power pop's produced took what they learned from the pioneers, adding their own stylistic flourishes along the way: music hall piano (Supergrass' "Alright"), alt-country grit (the Jayhawks' "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me"), singer/songwriter storytelling (Rhett Miller's "Our Love").

The beauty of power pop is that it's a genre readymade for hunters and collectors on the lookout for knockouts. Here's where you'll find a Lemonheads album cut that'll leave you wondering why it wasn't a hit ("Confetti"), along with latter-day additions to the cannon: Rooney's "Blueside," OK Go's "Get Over It," and Marvelous 3's "You're So Yesterday."

Take the high-decibel crunch of the mid-'60s Who, inject an enormous, unforgettable hook, and lace the concoction with a sugar-sweet melody. What you've got is the recipe for power pop — arguably the very best sound rock 'n' roll has to offer. For three decades, bands from Big Star to Cheap Trick, the Plimsouls to the Smithereens, Fountains of Wayne to Rooney have experimented with the formula, crafting blasts of three-minute joy that inevitably make us smile like it's the first day of summer vacation all over again.