Is It Jangle Pop?

A survey of the genre known as jangle pop, its originators and modern progenitors

The Byrds frontman Roger McGuinn.

A power light flickers on a Fender Deluxe Reverb amplifier. A crackle is heard as a guitar cable is plugged in to the front. An open chord is strummed on a Rickenbacker 360. The chime rings out, hanging in the air momentarily, before the rest of the band kicks in.

Thus would begin the movie about jangle pop, the sometimes celebrated, occasionally maligned sub-genre that has snaked its way through multiple decades of rock n’ roll. It’s a sound that took shape during the transition from traditional acoustic folk to the electrified sound of the ‘60s, and continued on in the ensuing decades in artists both overground (Tom Petty) and underground (The Soft Boys). In this article, we’ll explore the jangle pop genre and point to some of the best examples of it, both old and new.

Disclaimer: this is meant as a high-level overview, so please don’t come at me with your “How could you not mention Close Lobsters?” comments.

What is jangle pop?

The “jangle” part of jangle pop is at its most basic the sound of clean, mostly distortion-free guitars, playing arpeggios. The “pop” part of jangle pop is an adherence to the established Western rock n’ roll pop song format—that is, verses, bridges, choruses, and songs that are under four minutes in length.

Jangle pop beginnings

Jangle pop is generally understood to have its seeds in the ‘60s with bands like The Byrds and The Beatles. The term “jangle” sprang from a line in the The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man,” itself a Bob Dylan song and lyric (“In the jingle jangle morning”).

These Rickenbacker-wielding, foundational bands made pop music chiming and beautiful. However, neither the Beatles nor the Byrds could be strictly classified as jangle pop bands—The Byrds were more of a folk-rock (and as their career progressed, country-rock) outfit, while the Beatle traversed—and invented—multiple pop genres. Still, the popularity of these groups laid the groundwork for the jangle pop style as we know it.

The jangly guitar sound that The Byrds and The Beatles helped popularize continued to flourish in the ‘70s with big-time groups like Fleetwood Mac and the aforementioned Tom Petty (among many others), along with then lesser-known acts like Big Star. It could even be heard in more angular rock of Television. The ensuing decades would showcase a lot of overlap with jangle pop and other guitar-forward genres like post punk, psych, twee pop, new wave, and even goth.

‘80s jangle pop

The ‘80s saw a massive resurgence (if it ever really went away) of the jangly ‘60s sound. Clean, ringing guitars were back in vogue, and jangle pop could be heard in a multitude of British scenes and bands of the era. This included C86 groups like The Orchids, Felt, and McCarthy; power pop-leaning bands like The Records and the Barracudas; the psychedelic pop of The Soft Boys and Television Personalities; early period Primal Scream; The Cure; and of course, The Smiths and their brilliant guitar player Johnny Marr.

Johnny Marr of The Smiths

Jangle pop simultaneously flourished stateside during this period. Jangly sounds abounded in Paisley Underground bands like The Rain Parade, The Three O’Clock, and even the early Bangles. More crucially, R.E.M.’s Peter Buck jangled his way through the decade, inspiring countless bands to do the same. The band’s ability to marry 12-string Rickenbacker chime with fast rhythms and surrealist lyrics took the jangle pop genre in a new direction.

Lest we forget, jangle pop was also popping off in the Southern Hemisphere, with Australian bands like The Church, and New Zealand bands like The Clean and The Bats.

All of this helped establish jangle pop as a codified musical genre.

‘90s jangle pop

The ‘90s are generally regarded as the “grunge” years, a time when clean sounds were ditched in favor of crunchy, distorted tones. In truth, jangle pop continued to exist—and thrive—throughout the decade.

Power pop icon Matthew Sweet was one of jangle pop’s top practitioners in the ‘90s—after all, a lot of jangle goes into power pop. Ditto Teenage Fanclub, although that band started out playing a dirtier-sounding version of the genre. The power popping, jangle rocking Gin Blossoms were radio mainstays in the early to mid part of the decade.

Jangle pop could even be detected in some of the shoegaze bands of the ‘90s. Lush did nothing if not jangle, and the same goes for Slowdive. My Bloody Valentine started out as a jangly anorak band, before Kevin Shields discovered the whammy bar on a Jazzmaster and went in a completely different direction.

Slowdive

There were many other well-known jangle pop, or jangle pop-adjacent bands in the 90s, particularly in the UK. The Sundays gently jangled, House of Love forcefully jangled, and the Stone Roses broke new ground by marrying chorused, arpeggiated jangle with dance beats. John Squire’s riffs remain some of the most heavenly the style has ever produced.

Modern jangle pop

As with other genres pioneered by The Beatles, jangle pop has continued on in one form or another in every decade, and will likely live on for as long as people make music with guitars.

Certain labels continue to churn out jangle pop music year in, year out. See Slumberland Records, who currently have not one but two bands with the word Chime in their names (Chime School and the Laughing Chimes).

My own band The Rightovers began as a wimpy jangle pop outfit, veered into noise pop territory, then circled back to chiming guitars. In our case, we’ve kept the sound fresh for ourselves by using alternate tunings to do our jangling.

Jangle pop equipment

Guitars

There’s no doubt that Rickenbackers are the poster guitars for the jangle pop genre. However, jangly sounds can and have been made on other single coil pickup guitars for decades, including lots of Fender models: Jazzmasters, Jaguars, Stratocasters, and Telecasters. George Harrison jangled on a Gretsch sometimes; John Lennon jangled on an Epiphone Casino on many an occasion.

Amplifiers

Fender combo amps are probably the most jangled on amps in history if for no other reason than there’ve been so many of them in the world. This includes Deluxe Reverbs, Twin Reverbs, Princeton Reverbs and Bassmans (see McGuinn, Roger).

The Beatles, of course, favored Vox AC30s to achieve their jangle, and many bands through the years followed suit. In the ‘80s, the ultra-clean, solid state Roland JC-120 rose to popularity, and was used as a jangle machine by the likes of The Cure and The Smiths.

Roland Jazz Chorus-120s were a staple in the 1980s and are still used widely.

Effects Pedals

Jangle purists will tell you the true way to get jangle is to run your guitar clean through a compressor pedal and on into your amp (side note: Roger McGuinn bypassed an amp altogether for Byrds records, plugging his 12-string directly into the mixing board).

Non-purists, or those who favor the jangly tones of the ‘80s, may counter that such a sound is boring, and that delay and chorus pedals are the only way to spice things up (I myself am very fond of the classic Boss CE-2 chorus pedal). Others still may want to put some flanger or tremolo on their arpeggiated sound.

For those serious about their jangle, there’s a compressor pedal that is designed to help you to achieve Byrds-like chime called, appropriately, The Jangle Box. I used to use one and can attest it works as advertised.

The moral of the story here is that there’s no right and wrong way to produce jangle. The jangle pop guitar players you love didn’t all use Rickenbackers with vintage blackface Deluxe Reverbs. Some used Stratocasters with Marshall amps. Some played Gretch guitars through Jazz Chorus-120s. You could probably make a fairly close facsimile of a jangle pop song by using VST instruments directly in your DAW. If you do that, please let me know how it goes.

Best jangle pop bands

Here’s a few of the important jangle pop bands from the ‘80s onwards.

Best Jangle Pop Bands of the 1980s

• Stone Roses

• The Smiths

• R.E.M.

• Cleaners From Venus

• Felt

• The Bats

• The Church

Best Jangle Pop Bands of the 1990s

• The La’s

• Matthew Sweet

• Lush

• House of Love

• Teenage Fanclub

• The Sundays

Best jangle pop albums

A random selection of some of the best jangle pop albums ever put to tape.

• Primal Scream - Sonic Flower Groove

• Stone Roses - Stone Roses

• The Smiths - The Smiths

• R.E.M. - Reckoning

• Brighter - Laurel

• Soft Boys - Underwater Moonlight

• The Bats - Daddy’s Highway

• Cleaners From Venus - On Any Normal Monday

Best jangle pop songs

Lastly, here’s a long playlist containing some of greatest jangle pop songs in history. Enjoy!

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