I’ve got the power

My best friend Splotchy (never met him) asked me (asked any of his readers) to draw up a list of 8 power pop tunes, and now we are asked to write why we picked them.
Here is my list:

“Ca Plane Pour Moi” – Plastic Bertrand
Anyone who knows me knows I rate this as one of the best audio experiences on earth. Anyone who knows me well knows, when I get really excited, I like to play this on loop via 3 or more players at the same time, and all beginning at different times. The effect, if you’re really excited, is like taking every drug at the same time and somehow staying conscious.

“The Don” - The View
Like any good pop record, this song can be played incessantly when you first hear it, and even when you’re sick of it you still have the impulse to play it again. I don’t really get the lyrics, but it does transport me to being young and bored on the streets of Scotland (which I never was).

“Crazy Taxi” – Andy Hui
I wanted to put something from ‘home’, but it was a little tricky, as pretty much all popular Asian music could be loosely referred to as power-pop. Andy Hui is a personal hero of mine. When I first came to Hong Kong I fell in love with his then-girlfriend Sammi Cheng (again, never met her), and I hated him because I thought he wasn’t good enough for her. Later I saw him in concert though and saw what an amazing voice he had. It was clear that most HK singers relied on studio effects and costumes to make their music, but Andy Hui had a reputation for giving a shit and working hard. Now I’ll buy anything he puts out, and sit in the dark with my headphones and listen to every little nuance of his voice like a quivering, star-struck schoolgirl.
I don’t know what the song is about; I assume it’s about the video game of the same name.
I once assigned my first assistant the task of learning this song in karaoke, and he did it. Work can sometimes be much too fun.

“Mr Brightside” – The Killers
I was kind of unsure about adding a song that I assumed everyone knows, but the test was to come up with the songs that fit the subject the best, and this ticks all the right boxes. This one almost got replaced by “Cookie Day” by Shonen Knife, but in the end I kind of started getting annoyed with them, and The Killers still excited me, so they won this prestigious placement. I always remember being in the gym and listening to these lyrics for the first time. I don’t know why that moment will always stand out in my mind.

“Get Over You” – The Undertones
The Undertones always struck me as one of the first power pop bands. They had the edge of punk and the confidence to make commercial music. The first mixed tape I ever received had Fergal Sharkey on it. It was almost 10 years later that I found out Fergal Sharkey was actually much more famous for his original band the Undertones. I think they are also famous for being the only band John Peel played twice in a row (with “Teenage Kicks”, which he said was the perfect pop record).

“Baby Talk” – Generation X/Billy Idol
I had a huge Billy Idol resurgence about a year ago after I discovered his recent album “Devil’s Playground”. I always felt he became just too commercially popular to keep his credentials. Having said that, though, “Whiplash Smile” is still one of the best albums ever recorded.

“Go Square Go!” – Glasvegas
Another example of a song that pushes so many of the right buttons you almost start to resent it. Everything I heard from Glasvegas is as exciting as this, and I’m a real sucker for a Scottish accent. I’d love to take Baby up there and get her to pick up some of those tones. Man, I’m dripping all over the floor just thinking about it.

“We’re All Going To Die” – Malcolm Middleton
This was a last minute entry, and I was very excited when I thought of it. It also made me realize 3 of the 8 entries are from Scotland (and only one from America). This song was being pushed by a few indie radio stations to become the English Christmas number one last year, but it didn’t make it unfortunately. Malcolm Middleton was also in the punk band Arab Strap, which I’m frantically trying to illegally download now.

“Jet Boy Jet Girl” – Elton Mortello (*extra special bonus track)
I was torn between this and the Plastic Bertrand version. I didn’t want to include them both as that would really eat away at my precious 8 slots. In the end I chose Plastic Bertrand as it’s the one I listen to more. I’ve tried to figure out which one was recorded first, but the more I read about these two songs, the more I start to believe that we, the public, are not supposed to ever know the truth. Essentially they are the same backing tracks, but the Belgian version has silly bubble-gum lyrics, and the English version is about a 15 year old boy who is introduced to sex with another guy, then gets his heart broken when he sees him playing around with girls. I’m pretty sure Plastic Bertrand was the drummer for Elton Mortello, and I also heard they used the same session musicians in two separate recordings, one after the other, to avoid any copyright infringement of the recordings.