"The Music of Hit Records That Miss"

"Pick up any of Not Lame's International Pop Overthrow collections, or the numerous sets that Rhino has issued over the years—Shake Some Action and Come Out and Play, or the three volumes of Poptopia—and you will find that from about 1970, when Badfinger released the first true power-pop record, 'No Matter What' (which admittedly went to #8 on the U.S. chart), an astonishing amount of effort and genius and chops has been expended by the practitioners of power pop to create a large number of equally well-crafted, tightly played, buoyant-yet-wrenching surefire hit songs that went nowhere, moved no units, never made it out of the band's hometown, or came heartbreakingly close to Hugeness before sinking, like The Records' 'Starry Eyes' or Bram Tchaikovsky's 'Girl of My Dreams,' back into the obscurity that is the characteristic fate of all great power pop. Something—maybe it's the self-consciousness, or the darkness, or that handclap of irony—dooms the would-be hit songs of power pop, so that the Raspberries' wonderful, parenthetically telling 'Overnight Sensation (Hit Record),' with its backup singers hopefully, achingly praying 'Number one!' over and over in its chorus, never rose any higher than Number 18."

Michael Chabon in a 2010 McSweeney's article writes about power pop.