my power pop addiction, no. 7 (79)

20/20 are everything I love most in music. Their songs are catchy as hell, and they’re hard, but not too hard, and never heavy. There’s a subtle but essential difference between hard and heavy and 20/20 is the very best example of a band that’s at once hard and light. But it’s not a lightness in the sense of hearing Baby I’m-a Want You wafting from the receptionist's radio at your doctor’s office. The lightness is a kind of fast-twitch deftness, a punchiness, perkiness, suppleness, ease of movement, the notes seeming to bounce effortlessly into each other, and yet the music maintains a satisfying, guitar-fueled edge at the same time. I can’t get enough of this sort of thing. I need it every day, more so as I get older, which is interesting because the music is so youthful in its passion and energy, not at all weighed down by the harsh realities of life. I think my midlife crisis has manifested itself in this growing addiction to poppy hooks... Last night I was hanging out with Vito, my beloved cat, drinking some Maker’s Mark, and listening to 20/20’s first album, when I came to the realization that great pop songs are intrinsically tragic, no matter how joyful they may be. They seduce you, put you in touch with so many great sensations, with the best parts of your humanity, but then they end just as quickly. And you know going into it that they’re going to end soon enough, that their ending will send you crashing back to your mundane existence, with a million different things to worry about and unreliable people who are base and mean and don’t give you any of the validation you got for those three minutes when you were in thrall to the power of pop. But if pop is tragic, it also offers redemption. There’s always another great song, another hook, more guitars and tambourines and lush harmonies, more hearrbreaking snapshots of first kisses and romantic infatuation. Remember the lightning. There's always more and it never gets old. Never.