Cheap Trick

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• Genre: Power Pop
• Hometown: Rockford
• Cheap Trick Website

About

Emerging from the Chicago suburbs in the mid/late 1970s, Cheap Trick's fuzzy Power Pop stood out amidst a rock/pop field of aging dinosaurs (the Who, Zeppelin), nihilistic punks (the Pistols) and cheesy Disco (the Bee Gees). Combined with singer Robin Zander's sex appeal and careening vocals, guitarist Rick Nielsen's penchant for loud guitar hooks have written the quartet some gigantic checks over the years, particularly after the multi-platinum live record At Budokan made them superstars around the end of the '70s. Legendary hits such as "Southern Girls" and "I Want You To Want Me" bounced, rocked and rolled with electrifying fervor, helping to jump-start an American Power Pop scene that had stalled in the mid-'70s with the demise of Big Star and the Raspberries. Cheap Trick took those bands' supreme sense of melody and cranked the amps up louder than they ever did: "Surrender" remains the loudest catchy song -- and the catchiest loud song -- this side of the Replacements. The band has continued in the decades since, enduring a fallow, big-haired period in the '80s and widespread reverence in the '90s from younger bands wishing to carry on the Power Pop flame.

- Eric Shea