One-Trick Ponies.

Browse around the web for opinions on pop music, and you’ll frequently come across the assertion that diversity is a good thing: one of the reasons given for the Beatles being the Greatest Band Ever is how musically diverse they were, from “Eleanor Rigby” (chamber pop) to “Helter Skelter” (sonic assault) to “Within You Without You” (raga-pop) to “Got to Get You into My Life” (cod-Motown) to “Revolution 9” (musique concrète) to “Tomorrow Never Knows” (psychedelia ground zero) to “Ob-la-di Ob-la-da” (embarrassingly white calypso). People who like to think of themselves as Serious Music Listeners will often rank diversity up there with innovation, technical ability, and pleasantness of sound in their lists of things that make music objectively good.

I (as is probably obvious from the preceding paragraph) disagree.

Or, at least, kind of.

Don’t get me wrong; diversity is a great thing. I’m so unabashedly a fan of diversity that whenever a reviewer grumbles about a band’s penchant for style-jumping getting in the way of the coherence of their album (and they say this all the time), my ears perk up. I like to compile CDs that lurch from style to style, bossa nova to ragtime to lo-fi punk to slick hip-hop, and get really excited about unlikely combinations. (Am I the only person who really, really wishes that the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water” actually contained any “funky Dixieland”?)

But. There’s something hugely attractive about a record in which every song sounds exactly like the one that came before; so long as the sound itself is great. And, I suppose, is immediately identifiable with that artist and no other; or even that album and no other.

An example: Suzi Quatro’s debut album.

You haven't heard it? (This is me being shocked.) Okay, whatever. You’ve heard “Can the Can,” right? Okay, now just add ten more of those, one of which is a cover of “All Shook Up.” The same sound on each: pounding toms, chunky guitars, boogie-glam rhythms, fuzzed-out electric keyboards, and Suzi’s hoarse shout/squeal.

Another example: The Ronettes' Greatest Hits. Yes, they’re pop masterpieces, every one. But they’re the same pop masterpiece, every time: just a lush, echoey background for Ronnie’s cracking, secondhand-princess voice — and often re-using the same melodies, or at least the same chord changes.

Another example: the Buzzcocks’ oevure, but primarily Singles Going Steady. “Spiky pop” remains the descriptive tag nonpareil, but it can be fleshed out: the chugging motorik-meets-Buddy Holly guitars, the splashy drums, Pete Shelley’s adenoidal yelp.

There are more. The Pogues. Chuck Berry. (You don’t mess with perfection.) The Specials. Johnny Cash’s Sun recordings. The Supremes before 1967. This Year’s Model. Creedence Clearwater Revival. The Jesus and Mary Chain. The Left Banke. The Beach Boys up to “California Girls.” The Byrds up to Fifth Dimension. Jerry Lee Lewis. The Clash. Del Shannon. John Lee Hooker. If You’re Feeling Sinister. Patsy Cline. Wreckless Eric. Electric Warrior. Joan Jett. Big Star. James Brown, 1964 to 1974. The B-52’s. Bo Diddley in the 50s. Adam & the Ants. Motorhead. AC/DC. And, of course, most famously and longlastingly, the Ramones.

Which brings me back to:

And, I suppose, is immediately identifiable with that artist and no other; or even that album and no other.

The Ramones have an immediately-identifiable sound. Nearly every punk band to follow them did not; which is why only the early Clash and the Buzzcocks show up above. The pleasure in listening to a band that sounds only microscopically different from the next band is entirely different from the pleasure of listening to an act that could never be mistaken for anyone else.

So, anyway, I’ve been devouring a lot of these samey albums (they’re best when they're short: twelve songs at most) and enjoying the hell out of them. In a way, they hark back to what people like to call the Golden Age of Pop, meaning the years 1955-1965, when (say) Chubby Checker would have a hit, then put out an LP of nine variations on that hit. But when the sound that’s being repeated is a good one, it can be a golden experience, and the reviewers’ whining about “consistency” and “coherence” begins to make a little sense.

Still, I’m not about to throw out the White Album in favor of Please Please Me. That’s crazy talk.