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Bubblegum pop
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Bubblegum pop (also known as bubblegum rock, bubblegum music, or simply bubblegum) is a genre of pop music whose classic period ran from 1967 to 1972. The chief characteristics of the genre are that it is pop music contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens, is produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers, using faceless singers and has an intangible, upbeat "bubblegum" sound.
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Bubblegum pop (also known as bubblegum rock, bubblegum music, or simply bubblegum) is a genre of pop music whose classic period ran from 1967 to 1972. The chief characteristics of the genre are that it is pop music contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens, is produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers, using faceless singers and has an intangible, upbeat "bubblegum" sound. The songs typically have singalong choruses, seemingly childlike themes and a contrived innocence, occasionally combined with an undercurrent of sexual double entendre.
They also have a catchy melody, simple chords, simple harmonies, danceable beats, and repetitive riffs or "hooks". The song lyrics often concern romantic love, but are notable for their frequent reference to sugary food, including sugar, honey, jelly and marmalade.
The genre was predominantly a singles phenomenon rather than album-oriented and because many acts were manufactured in the studio using session musicians, a large number of bubblegum songs were by one-hit wonders. Among the best-known acts of bubblegum's golden era are 1910 Fruitgum Company, The Ohio Express, The Archies, The Lemon Pipers and The Partridge Family.
Cross-marketing with cereal and bubblegum manufacturers also strengthened the link between bubblegum songs and confectionery. Cardboard records by The Archies, Banana Splits, The Jackson 5, The Monkees, Josie and the Pussycats, H.R. Pufnstuf and other acts were included on cereal boxes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, while acts including The Brady Bunch had their own brands of chewing gum as a result of licensing deals with TV networks and record companies.
Producers Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz have claimed credit for coining the term "bubblegum music", saying that when they discussed their target audience, they decided it was "teenagers, the young kids. And at the time we used to be chewing bubblegum and my partner and I used to look at it and laugh and say, 'Ah, this is like bubblegum music'." The term was seized upon by Buddah Records label executive Neil Bogart. Music writer and bubblegum historian Bill Pitzonka confirmed the claim, telling Goldmine magazine: "That's when bubblegum crystallized into an actual camp. Kasenetz and Katz really crystallized it when they came up with the term themselves and that nice little analogy. And Neil Bogart, being the marketing person he was, just crammed it down the throats of people. That's really the point at which bubblegum took off."
The genre began to fade from about 1972 as the focus of its target audience moved to a new group of teen idol stars in the US and the new genre of glam rock in Britain. Bubblegum left a powerful legacy in the later rise of prefabricated boy bands and girl bands such as The Spice Girls and Take That, which were marketed with similar techniques. Several prolific bubblegum creators including Bogart and producer Giorgio Moroder moved on to disco, leading to the rise of acts including Donna Summer and The Village People.
The genre has undergone a revival since the launch of The Spice Girls in 1996 and the popularity of acts associated with The Disney Channel including Raven Symone, Hilary Duff and Lindsay Lohan since 2000.
Origins
The birth of bubblegum is generally dated from the success in 1968 of The Lemon Pipers' "Green Tambourine", 1910 Fruitgum Company's "Simon Says" and The Ohio Express' "Yummy, Yummy, Yummy", but music critics have identified novelty songs including The Dixie Cups' "Iko Iko" and Patti Page's "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" as possible precursors..
A breeding ground for the genre has also been found in the field of 1960s garage punk, the songs of which shared an overriding simplicity with bubblegum. Garage and bubblegum groups were also both generally singles acts. Several garage punk bands, including Shadows of Knight, later recorded bubblegum tracks, while Ohio Express, one of the major 1960s bubblegum bands, began their recording career with punk-rooted tunes.
Between those two camps emerged Florida group The Royal Guardsmen, who scored a US No.2 hit in 1966 with their novelty hit "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron," and The Fifth Estate, whose 1967 song "Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead" reached No. 11 in the US.
Tommy James and the Shondells are also seen as a major influence, with such songs as 1964's "Hanky Panky", but critics are divided on one possible major bubblegum band prototype: The Monkees. Although the band began as a prefabricated, fictional rock group concocted to sell records and TV advertising time, the band later staged a coup and wrested creative control from their creators.
1960s and 1970s
The success of The Lemon Pipers' "Green Tambourine" (US No.1, February 1968) was followed by a wave of bubblegum delivered by the Super K Productions team of Kasenetz and Katz, who had scored hits a year earlier with the Music Explosion's "Little Bit o' Soul" (No. 2, May) and The Ohio Express's "Beg, Borrow and Steal" (No. 29, October).
In early 1968 the pair signed New Jersey band Jeckyll and the Hydes, changed the band name to 1910 Fruitgum Company and released two singles that made the Billboard Hot 100 – "Simon Says" (No.4, February 1968) and "May I Take a Giant Step (Into Your Heart)" (No. 63). In May 1968 The Ohio Express (who had also undergone an enforced name change from Sir Timothy and the Royals) scored a No.4 hit with "Yummy Yummy Yummy". The song had been written by teenager Joey Levine and accomplished songwriter Artie Resnick and released with vocals by Levine (originally recorded as a guide vocal for Ohio Express) and backing by session musicians. The song was released as an Ohio Express single without Levine's knowledge. The band released two follow-ups, "Down at Lulu's" (No. 33, August 1968) and "Chewy Chewy" (No. 15, October 1968), both of which also featured the vocals of Levine, who had never met the band, and neither featuring any members of Ohio Express. The real Ohio Express toured, supporting The Beach Boys, The Who and Herman's Hermits, with bassist Dean Kastran performing the vocals for the hits, emulating Levine's nasal-punk singing style.
Kasenetz and Katz developed a strong relationship with Buddah Records, releasing a series of hits by 1910 Fruitgum Company, Ohio Express and one-offs such as "Quick Joey Small" by The Kasenetz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus, a Levine-fronted group of studio players. Kasenetz and Katz also scored on Bell Records in early 1969 with "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin" by another manufactured band, Crazy Elephant.
The dominance of the Kasenetz-Katz team was challenged from mid-1968 by the trio of Bogart – who by then had resigned from Buddah Records – music publisher Don Kirshner and "Hanky Panky"'s co-author, Brill Building writer/producer Jeff Barry. A year earlier Kirshner had been removed from the music team behind The Monkees, a made-for-TV pop band that finally rebelled against his strict creative controls. Since 1966 singles and albums had been released under the name of The Monkees, despite usually having no more than one member contributing vocals. Kirshner envisaged a manufactured group over which he would have even greater control: a cartoon band, The Archies. He enlisted Barry and Andy Kim as songwriters, Ron Dante as vocalist and session musicians including Hugh McCracken, Gary Chester, Chuck Rainey and Ron Frangipane to provide the music. The fictional band's "Sugar Sugar" was the best-selling single of 1969 and the band scored five more Top 100 singles including "Bang Shang-a-Lang" and "Jingle Jangle."
Cartoon producers Hanna-Barbera created The Banana Splits, with costumed actors miming to pre-recorded tracks for a Saturday morning cartoon show, around this same time. Other animated acts included Josie and The Pussycats (from Hanna-Barbera), The Hardy Boys (Filmation), the Groovie Goolies (Filmation), The Sugar Bears, and (in the UK) The Wombles.
The initial era of bubblegum carried on into the early 1970s, with hits from The Cowsills, David Cassidy and The Partridge Family, The Jackson 5, The Osmonds, The DeFranco Family and others. The Evolution Revolution was an all-simian bubblegum band on ABC-TV's Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp from 1970 to 1972; the vocals were by Steve Hoffman, with many studio musicians from The Grass Roots' recording sessions. Sesame Workshop, then called Children's Television Workshop, also jumped on the bubblegum bandwagon with a juvenile group called "The Short Circus" from its new series, The Electric Company, who would also double as kid cast members in various sketches in the show.
Many British acts of the first glam rock era (approximately 1971-1975) had bubblegum influences. These included Gary Glitter, Alvin Stardust, T. Rex, and such Nicky Chinn/Mike Chapman-produced acts as Sweet, Mud, and American expatriate Suzi Quatro. These acts had great success in the UK, Asia, Europe and Australia, charting many singles. They were less successful in the US, however.
Bubblegum maintained a minor presence on the US charts in the late 1970s, particularly through Shaun Cassidy (David's half-brother) and Leif Garrett, both of whom also maintained television acting careers. The last big act of the '70s that featured obvious bubblegum elements were the Scotland-based Bay City Rollers, who charted hits through the end of the decade.
1980s
The 1980s saw few mainstream bubblegum-esque acts in the US and UK. In Latin America, bubblegum acts such as Timbiriche, Menudo, Los Chicos, Las Cheris, and Los Chamos were hugely popular.
The 1980 single "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" introduced The Police to an international audience with elements of bubblegum and in 1988 lead singer Joe Elliott proclaimed "I'm hot, sticky sweet/from my head to my feet, yeah" in Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me", a pop-metal hit with influence from "Sugar Sugar." Another so-called hair-metal band Enuff Z'nuff would appropriate many aspects of bubblegum pop for their image and sound. Teen idols like Tiffany and Debbie Gibson predates bubblegum pop princess like Britney Spears.
1990s
Through the early and mid-1990s, grunge music, alternative rock, adult contemporary, gangsta rap and dance music dominated the pop charts. In 1997 bubblegum enjoyed a revival through the popularity of British girl group the Spice Girls, who shared with the bubblegum pop acts of old the production of catchy, simple, up-tempo pop tracks aimed at younger music buyers, a line-up assembled by producer-svengalis, and heavy merchandising aimed at a similarly young audience. Licensed Spice Girls products included chocolate bars, dolls, magazines, a feature length movie and even personal deodorizing spray. Similar groups around the time included A*Teens, Steps, S Club 7, Solid HarmoniE and Scooch.
A number of boy bands such as the Backstreet Boys, N'SYNC, 98 Degrees, Boyzone, Westlife, Take That, and O-Town also made their way on to the walls of teenagers around the world in the late 1990s. In their wake came a new wave of pop princesses, including Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore. The Scandinavian group Aqua also had massive "bubblegum" hits in Europe, but today are mostly remembered in the U.S. as a one-hit wonder for their controversial song "Barbie Girl". The British pop group S Club 7 and Irish girl group B*Witched also achieved chart success in the late 1990s with bubblegum pop.
During this decade, the prime Latin bubblegum pop singer was Mexican teen idol Fey, who released three albums, sold over 7 million albums (a rare accomplishment in the Latin world) and had number one hits across Latin America. Many similar acts soon followed, including Kabah, Iran Castillo, Jennifer Lopez, Thalía, and Belinda.
2000s
A further rebirth began in the 2000s as network executives at Disney molded their female stars such as Hilary Duff, Raven Symone, Lindsay Lohan, Miley Cyrus, Ashley Tisdale and Vanessa Hudgens into pop princesses, as well as grooming acts such as the Cheetah Girls and the Jonas Brothers for bubblegum success.
Most of the songs from the Disney Channel original movie High School Musical soundtrack mix elements of traditional musical numbers with bubblegum pop elements. The soundtrack to the movie was the number one selling album in the United States in 2006 with heaviest support among preteen girls. The Hannah Montana Soundtrack released in October 2006, became the first TV soundtrack to enter the Billboard chart at No 1.
See also
External links
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