It takes guts to name your band (and album) after one of the best Beach Boys LPs. But history has proven this 1979 debut to be among the best power pop records ever made—and not only because of its gigantic hooks, four-on-the-floor drumming, or classic harmonizing, either. The quality runs deeper than that. And because three of 20/20's original band members grew up in Tulsa, Midwestern sensibilities abound. There’s altered teenage reality (“Yellow Pills,” the band’s signature tune), suburban longing (“Backyard Guys,” “Remember the Lightning”), an ode to a human downer (“Jet Lag”), and time-honored ache for a girl (“Cheri,” “Obsession”). Produced by onetime Sparks guitarist and Paley Brothers producer Earle Mankey—a resumé that all but guaranteed the album too left-field for the era’s conservative radio—the songs owe as much to mid-period Kinks and Revolver-era Beatles as the then-current scene in Los Angeles, which included The Knack, The Plimsouls, and fellow Oklahomans Dwight Twilley and Phil Seymour. Credit the cults of American power pop fans for keeping this album’s popularity alive.
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