power pop
power pop noun: a genre of popular music inspired by 1960s British and American pop and rock music, with strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs.
Noun
power pop (uncountable)
- A genre of popular music inspired by 1960s British and American pop and rock music, with strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs.
- Power pop was given the “pop” part of its name because the songs were based on well-crafted, memorable melodies with clever lyrics, as were some of the early songs by the Beatles. Power pop songs also often included catchy-sounding group harmonies like those sung by the Beach Boys in the early...1998, Katherine Charlton, Rock Music Styles: A History, McGraw-Hill, page 116
- Then it’s early R.E.M. in excelsis: seething momentum, cascading guitar arpeggios, power-pop punch in the arrangements, […].2018 October 25, James Parker, “R.E.M., in Retrospect”, in The Atlantic
Forms of power pop
| alternative form | powerpop |
|---|---|
| alternative form | power-pop |
Questions about power pop
- What does power pop mean?
- Power pop means a genre of popular music inspired by 1960s British and American pop and rock music, with strong melodies, crisp vocal harmonies, economical arrangements, and prominent guitar riffs.
- What part of speech is power pop?
- Power pop is a noun.
Words near power pop in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: power pop (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “power pop.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/power_pop. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.