20 Greats from the Golden Decade of Power Pop

• Artist: Various Artists
• Release Date: July 19, 2005
• Type: Collection (various artists)
• Genre: Rock

Review

There have been many compilations that cover the same ground as Varese's 2005 collection 20 Greats from the Golden Decade of Power Pop, often with the very same songs -- it must be an unwritten law that power pop various-artists collections have to have the Flamin' Groovies' "Shake Some Action," 20/20's "Yellow Pills," Phil Seymour's "Precious to Me," Dwight Twilley's "I'm on Fire," the Raspberries' "Go All the Way," and Todd Rundgren's "Couldn't I Just Tell You" (although it is true that any album anywhere would benefit from inclusion of the latter). Nevertheless, this 20-track set is the best single-disc sampler of '70s power pop, since it not only contains all the aforementioned standards, but it also has selections from Big Star and Badfinger, the Spongetones and the Beat, Shoes and the Scruffs -- plus, it's the first power pop disc in recent memory to actually license Cheap Trick's perennial "Surrender." So that means that this disc is arguably the best available single-disc, multi-artist introduction to power pop, which means it's useful for the curious, even though every power pop fanatic in the world has each of these songs several times over already. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi

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