Bubbles & Cheesecake
Encyclopedia
Bubbles & Cheesecake is an U.S.
Internet-based, multi-media collaboration between multi-disciplinary artist Allee Willis
and singer-songwriter Holly Palmer. Allee Willis is a GRAMMY-winning, Emmy and Tony
-nominated composer
whose work includes Earth, Wind & Fire
's "September" and "Boogie Wonderland," Pet Shop Boys
with Dusty Springfield
’s "What Have I Done to Deserve This?", the Pointer Sisters
' "Neutron Dance
," "I'll Be There For You" (the theme to Friends
) and the Broadway musical The Color Purple
. Holly Palmer
is a solo recording artist and formerly a vocalist with the Gnarls Barkley
live band. She has also worked with David Bowie
, Dr. Dre
, Billy Preston
and Michael Bublé
, among others.
The name Bubbles & Cheesecake refers to Willis' and Palmer's respective alter-egos. In their overall mythology for the Bubbles & Cheesecake universe, Willis and Palmer say that they act as "managers" for their alter-egos. They have also said that Bubbles and Cheesecake represent the side of themselves that is fearless, knows how to have fun and embraces individuality and free self-expression.
The idea of creative collaboration with an alter-ego began when Allee Willis started painting and making ceramics as Bubbles the artist in 1999. At the time, Willis told people that she had stumbled across Bubbles online and that she had decided to manage her career. The initial spin was that Bubbles was a "bad" artist and Willis' most significant discovery since the musical Del Rubio Triplets
, but in reality, Bubbles ultimately sold close to 1,000 paintings and ceramic pieces to collectors including Lily Tomlin
and Tracey Ullman
. In May, 1999, the New York Times reported that "Bubbles the artist is Ms. Willis herself." Although most people who collected Bubbles were in on the joke, Willis continued to deny her dual identity.
In 2006, Willis renewed her songwriting partnership with Palmer, who had been Willis' protégé since they began co-writing in 2000. It came up that Palmer had recently gotten the moniker "MC Cheesecake," a name given to her by her husband while she was rhyming about food in the car one day. Palmer came up with the idea that Cheesecake should become Bubbles' protégé, paralleling her relationship as Allee's, and Bubbles & Cheesecake were born.
The Willis and Palmer/Bubbles & Cheesecake collaboration encompasses hand-made music, videos, art work, animation
merchandise, online characters, stories, games, all embedded into a social network.
During that time, Palmer formed her own independent record label
, Bombshell Records, and released "I Confess" in 2004. She also went on the road singing with the Gnarls Barkley
live band.
In 2006, Willis and Palmer renewed composing together at the multi-media studio at Willis' Los Angeles
-area home, an art deco
landmark known as "Willis Wonderland." They originally intended to write songs for what would be Palmer's fourth solo album, Songs For Tuesday. Released in 2007, Songs For Tuesday features the Willis-Palmer co-write "Girl In Lust," which, like "I Confess" from Holly's previous album, also was later recorded and performed by Bubbles & Cheesecake.
Instead of continuing to work on Palmer's solo album, however, Willis and Palmer were inspired to write, perform, and record together in full collaboration under the name Bubbles & Cheesecake. Their first official single and video as Bubbles & Cheesecake is "It's A Woman Thang," which was introduced with the launch of their website in October 2007.
It is part of what will be an ongoing series of songs under the banner of The Soul Of Bubbles And Cheesecake. Each Bubbles & Cheesecake song will be treated as an individual experience and sensory universe, with matching music, art, video and web components. There is no "album" collecting them – Willis and Palmer instead see the songs as singular modules that will snap together to continually expand The Soul Of Bubbles And Cheesecake, which they describe as driven by a spirit of "soul, kitsch and self-expression."
The site's hyper-interactive functionality is an outgrowth of Allee Willis' background as an Internet pioneer. Throughout the '90s, she developed willisville, an evolving prototype
for the first sonic/visual/interactive social network in cyberspace. Its then-revolutionary merging of narrative frameworks and multiple technologies and platforms into a cohesive thematic environment was written up by Fortune
, the Wall Street Journal
, the New York Times
and other publications. It now serves as the archetype for Bubbles & Cheesecake. The website's visuals all feature artwork by Bubbles the artist, Willis' alter-ego.
Songs
Music Videos
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Internet-based, multi-media collaboration between multi-disciplinary artist Allee Willis
Allee Willis
Allee Willis is an American songwriter, artist, set designer, multimedia artist, writer, collector and director.-Overview:...
and singer-songwriter Holly Palmer. Allee Willis is a GRAMMY-winning, Emmy and Tony
Tony Award
The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Theatre, more commonly known as a Tony Award, recognizes achievement in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in New York City. The awards are given for Broadway...
-nominated composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
whose work includes Earth, Wind & Fire
Earth, Wind & Fire
Earth, Wind & Fire is an American soul and R&B band formed in Chicago, Illinois, in 1969 by Verdine and Maurice White. Also known as EWF, the band has won six Grammy Awards and four American Music Awards. They have been inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Vocal Group Hall of...
's "September" and "Boogie Wonderland," Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys
Pet Shop Boys are an English electronic dance music duo, consisting of Neil Tennant, who provides main vocals, keyboards and occasional guitar, and Chris Lowe on keyboards....
with Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'BrienSources use both Isabel and Isobel as the spelling of her second name. OBE , known professionally as Dusty Springfield and dubbed The White Queen of Soul, was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s...
’s "What Have I Done to Deserve This?", the Pointer Sisters
Pointer Sisters
The Pointer Sisters are an American pop/R&B recording act from Oakland, California that achieved mainstream success during the 1970s and 1980s. Spanning over three decades, their repertoire has included such diverse genres as pop, disco, jazz, bebop, blues, soul, funk, dance, country and rock.The...
' "Neutron Dance
Neutron Dance
"Neutron Dance" is a dance/R&B/New Wave song from the Pointer Sisters. Released from their album Break Out in 1984, the song hit the US Top 10, peaking at number six on the Billboard chart, and was also featured in the Eddie Murphy motion picture Beverly Hills Cop.It became the group's fourth top...
," "I'll Be There For You" (the theme to Friends
Friends
Friends is an American sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994 to May 6, 2004. The series revolves around a group of friends in Manhattan. The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
) and the Broadway musical The Color Purple
The Color Purple
The Color Purple is an acclaimed 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker. It received the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction...
. Holly Palmer
Holly Palmer
Holly Palmer is an American singer-songwriter based in Los Angeles, California. She has released four albums as a solo artist, and has toured extensively as a vocalist with acts including David Bowie and Gnarls Barkley. She is also the "Cheesecake" partner in Bubbles & Cheesecake, an...
is a solo recording artist and formerly a vocalist with the Gnarls Barkley
Gnarls Barkley
Gnarls Barkley is an American soul duo comprising Danger Mouse and Cee Lo Green. Their first studio album St. Elsewhere was released in 2006; along with its first single "Crazy". Both single and album were a major commercial success and have been noted for their large sales by download...
live band. She has also worked with David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...
, Dr. Dre
Dr. Dre
Andre Romelle Young , primarily known by his stage name Dr. Dre, is an American record producer, rapper, record executive, entrepreneur, and occasional actor. He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and a former co-owner and artist of Death Row Records...
, Billy Preston
Billy Preston
William Everett "Billy" Preston was a musician who gained notoriety and fame, first as a session musician for the likes of Sam Cooke, Ray Charles and The Beatles, and later finding fame as a solo artist with hits such as "Space Race", "Will It Go Round in Circles" and "Nothing from...
and Michael Bublé
Michael Bublé
Michael Steven Bublé is a Canadian singer. He has won several awards, including three Grammy Awards and multiple Juno Awards. His first album reached the top ten in Canada and the UK. He found worldwide commercial success with his 2005 album It's Time, and his 2007 album Call Me Irresponsible was...
, among others.
The name Bubbles & Cheesecake refers to Willis' and Palmer's respective alter-egos. In their overall mythology for the Bubbles & Cheesecake universe, Willis and Palmer say that they act as "managers" for their alter-egos. They have also said that Bubbles and Cheesecake represent the side of themselves that is fearless, knows how to have fun and embraces individuality and free self-expression.
The idea of creative collaboration with an alter-ego began when Allee Willis started painting and making ceramics as Bubbles the artist in 1999. At the time, Willis told people that she had stumbled across Bubbles online and that she had decided to manage her career. The initial spin was that Bubbles was a "bad" artist and Willis' most significant discovery since the musical Del Rubio Triplets
Del Rubio triplets
The Del Rubio Triplets were an American variety/musical act who rose to notoriety in the 1980s due mostly to their campy style of dress and their goofy interpretations of standards and songs of the era....
, but in reality, Bubbles ultimately sold close to 1,000 paintings and ceramic pieces to collectors including Lily Tomlin
Lily Tomlin
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...
and Tracey Ullman
Tracey Ullman
Tracey Ullman is a British stage and television actress, comedienne, singer, dancer, screenwriter and author ....
. In May, 1999, the New York Times reported that "Bubbles the artist is Ms. Willis herself." Although most people who collected Bubbles were in on the joke, Willis continued to deny her dual identity.
In 2006, Willis renewed her songwriting partnership with Palmer, who had been Willis' protégé since they began co-writing in 2000. It came up that Palmer had recently gotten the moniker "MC Cheesecake," a name given to her by her husband while she was rhyming about food in the car one day. Palmer came up with the idea that Cheesecake should become Bubbles' protégé, paralleling her relationship as Allee's, and Bubbles & Cheesecake were born.
The Willis and Palmer/Bubbles & Cheesecake collaboration encompasses hand-made music, videos, art work, animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
merchandise, online characters, stories, games, all embedded into a social network.
History
Bubbles & Cheesecake grew out of the songwriting partnership of Allee Willis and Holly Palmer, who were originally introduced in 2001 by music publisher Marla McNally. At first they came together to compose songs for Palmer's third solo album, I Confess. Their collaboration was interrupted when Willis left to co-write the music and lyrics for the Broadway production of The Color Purple. She was involved in the project for close to five years. The music & lyrics went on to be Tony-nominated, and the soundtrack album was GRAMMY nominated.During that time, Palmer formed her own independent record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
, Bombshell Records, and released "I Confess" in 2004. She also went on the road singing with the Gnarls Barkley
Gnarls Barkley
Gnarls Barkley is an American soul duo comprising Danger Mouse and Cee Lo Green. Their first studio album St. Elsewhere was released in 2006; along with its first single "Crazy". Both single and album were a major commercial success and have been noted for their large sales by download...
live band.
In 2006, Willis and Palmer renewed composing together at the multi-media studio at Willis' Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
-area home, an art deco
Art Deco
Art deco , or deco, is an eclectic artistic and design style that began in Paris in the 1920s and flourished internationally throughout the 1930s, into the World War II era. The style influenced all areas of design, including architecture and interior design, industrial design, fashion and...
landmark known as "Willis Wonderland." They originally intended to write songs for what would be Palmer's fourth solo album, Songs For Tuesday. Released in 2007, Songs For Tuesday features the Willis-Palmer co-write "Girl In Lust," which, like "I Confess" from Holly's previous album, also was later recorded and performed by Bubbles & Cheesecake.
Instead of continuing to work on Palmer's solo album, however, Willis and Palmer were inspired to write, perform, and record together in full collaboration under the name Bubbles & Cheesecake. Their first official single and video as Bubbles & Cheesecake is "It's A Woman Thang," which was introduced with the launch of their website in October 2007.
It is part of what will be an ongoing series of songs under the banner of The Soul Of Bubbles And Cheesecake. Each Bubbles & Cheesecake song will be treated as an individual experience and sensory universe, with matching music, art, video and web components. There is no "album" collecting them – Willis and Palmer instead see the songs as singular modules that will snap together to continually expand The Soul Of Bubbles And Cheesecake, which they describe as driven by a spirit of "soul, kitsch and self-expression."
The site's hyper-interactive functionality is an outgrowth of Allee Willis' background as an Internet pioneer. Throughout the '90s, she developed willisville, an evolving prototype
Prototype
A prototype is an early sample or model built to test a concept or process or to act as a thing to be replicated or learned from.The word prototype derives from the Greek πρωτότυπον , "primitive form", neutral of πρωτότυπος , "original, primitive", from πρῶτος , "first" and τύπος ,...
for the first sonic/visual/interactive social network in cyberspace. Its then-revolutionary merging of narrative frameworks and multiple technologies and platforms into a cohesive thematic environment was written up by Fortune
Fortune (magazine)
Fortune is a global business magazine published by Time Inc. Founded by Henry Luce in 1930, the publishing business, consisting of Time, Life, Fortune, and Sports Illustrated, grew to become Time Warner. In turn, AOL grew as it acquired Time Warner in 2000 when Time Warner was the world's largest...
, the Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, the New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
and other publications. It now serves as the archetype for Bubbles & Cheesecake. The website's visuals all feature artwork by Bubbles the artist, Willis' alter-ego.
Discography
EPs- The Soul of Bubbles & Cheesecake EP (2007, Bubbles & Cheesecake Unlimited)
Songs
- It's A Woman Thang (Willis/Palmer)
- I Confess (Willis/Palmer/Blockland)
- Girl In Lust (Willis/Palmer)
- Cryin, Lovin, Leavin (Willis/Palmer/Dozier)
Music Videos
- It's A Woman Thang