Well, you know, I thought there was a list. Let me think, then. Old-School "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys and "Cruisin'" By Smokey Robinson and the Miracles Will post some more modern picks in a while. Promise.

It's gotta have a bridge.

I Want it that Way - BSB

The Perfect Pop Song is a Potter Stewart thing, if anyone understands what I mean by that.

It has to hook you.

The refrain doesn't necessarily have to be singable, but it helps if it is.

It has to be well-crafted, well-produced, and built to deliver 3-5 minutes of musical bliss.

It doesn't necessarily have to be "all-time great" or by a "pop god."

Perfect Pop is not bubblegum, but bubblegum is often Perfect Pop.

It doesn't have to have a happy ending.

Most of all, you listen to it, and your first instinct is to listen to it again. And again.

That's about the best I can do. I lean on Potter Stewart most of the time with my definition.

"Waltz the Halls Always" by Game Theory.

I Want it that Way - BSB

Oh GAWD yes. A pox upon Diane Warren for writing that song.

I, I SEE LIFE

my iPod has learned to play my Guadalcanal Diary often. This album was on a cassette with 10,000 Maniacs - In my Tribe the summer I was 17 and they were played on almost continuous loop for 3 months.

What album or albums stick out for a specific time period for you?

"My Sharona" I don't even really like it, but I can't get it out of my head when I've heard it.(for the pop song question) Time period question: I actually broke up with my bf the week "Unbreak My Heart" by Toni Braxton came out so that will always mean my saddest week in Feb. 1995.

Perfect Pop is pure relativism. Your own description is the only one you need.

I kind of agree with this, but I do think that "pop" should have some connection to its etymology. That is, it should be popular, at least potentially. Take Chic's album Real People (which contained one of my Buffistamix choices, "26".) It was the follow up to Risqué and "Good Times". It was as good an album and had a handful of potential hits but it pretty much died in the water. The sound had changed a bit, built more around Nile's guitar and less around 'Nard's bass, but it was still pop if not an actual hit. Whereas Gregorian chants aren't pop even if that album a few years back went multiplatinum. And some artists work both sides of the divide: "Sweet Jane" was a pop song even if it didn't sell any better than the rest of the Velvet's catalog, but "Sister Ray" was definitively not pop.

Along those lines I also think that a Perfect Pop song has to hold up in the event it does become a big hit and you hear it all the freakin' time. Could be a great hook ("Satisfaction"), a memorable refrain ("I'm a loser, baby, so why don't ya kill me"), a killer arrangement (Aretha's "I Say a Little Prayer"), whatever... it just needs to make you say, I gotta hear that again... and again.

Love formally pop but deeply twisted stuff like Nick Lowe's "Marie Provost," the touching (honestly) story of a faded silent film star's sad end ("She was a winner/That became the doggie's dinner/She never meant that much to me").

"Plasticine" - Placebo
"How Soon is Now" - The Smiths

... and oddly "I'm Not Okay" by My Chemical Romance, because I canNOT get it out of my head. I've tried. I may have to break down and buy it off of iTunes.