VA - She’s Got the Power! Female Power Pop, Punk & Garage (2023)

She’s Got the Power! is the latest in an excellent series from Ace Records’ sister label, Big Beat, reappraising and recalibrating the sort-of-genre of power pop, and their second such release focusing exclusively on female-artists/women-led bands, following 2020’s Girls Go Power Pop.

”The term Power Pop was coined by Pete Townshend in 1967 to highlight the difference between the Who and competitors such as Herman’s Hermits. These days, the definition of the term has become more wide-ranging. Blondie’s ‘Hanging On the Telephone’, for instance, was regarded as new wave or punk in 1978, but with the benefit of hindsight it’s more Power Pop than anything else. This new compilation includes many more examples of the blurring of lines: the Dollyrots’ pop-punk mash-up of the Crystals and the Ramones is a rush of adrenalin and sweetness, the Donnas instil enough pop into metal to lighten its heaviness, Bad Moves add pop to indie, Lydia Loveless somehow squeezes pop into cow-punk, the Launderettes pour greasy honey over garage-rock, and the Courettes add a dash of Spectoresque candy over their tough retro-rock – but the point is that it’s all pop with power.

Power Pop has maintained a strong underground presence from the 70s up to the present day, having survived by blending with similar styles, and is now enthusiastically supported by die-hard fans around the world. Accordingly, we have widened the time-frame here to cover from 1978 right up to 2018 and have broadened our terms of reference to better reflect the way the genre has grown and developed. One thing stays the same though: we have retained the emphasis on high quality upbeat songs with catchy tunes that stick in your head and memorable hooks that deliver sugar straight to the veins.”