10 Perfect Power Pop Albums With No Bad Songs
4. Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick
When you think about the building blocks of what constitutes power pop, you're more often than not going to describe Cheap Trick's sound. Along with the amazing singalong choruses that came from their legendary performance at the Budokan arena, there was definitely an edge to their sound that gave them the respect of even some metal bands from back in the day like Anthrax. Though they would flirt between pop and rock throughout their career, they never sounded hungrier than on their debut record.
Long before the days of I Want You to Want Me and Surrender, this is the kind of record that sounds like if a punk band decided to make pop music for a living. From the opening punch of something like Hot Love, you're strapped in for something a lot heavier than the rest of the rock scene at the time, with Rick Nielsen living up to his wild man persona even without seeing him on the stage.
There are even some moments when the group actually borders on some darker territory, like on the Ballad of TV Violence, where you see Robin Zander getting a lot more gravelly with his vocal delivery before turning on the Beatles worship again on songs like ELO Kiddies. For anyone skeptical of the power pop genre as a whole, this is the kind of record that could get the more rock leaning stripe of music fans into the genre.