Bubblegum pop (also known as bubblegum rock, bubblegum music, or simply bubblegum) is a genre of pop music with an upbeat sound contrived and marketed to appeal to pre-teens and teenagers, produced in an assembly-line process, driven by producers, often using unknown singers. Bubblegum's classic period ran from 1967 to 1972. A second wave of bubblegum started two years later and ran until 1977 when disco took over and punk rock emerged; Britney Spears has since then been credited with influencing the revival of the genre in the late 1990s.
The genre was predominantly a singles phenomenon rather than an album-oriented one, the presumption being that teenagers and pre-teens had less money to spend on records and were thus more likely to buy singles than albums. Also, 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 and The Archies, an animated group which had the most successful bubblegum song with "Sugar, Sugar", Billboard Magazine's No. 1 single for 1969. Singer Tommy Roe, arguably, had the most bubblegum hits of any artist during this period.
Read more about Bubblegum Pop: Characteristics, Etymology, History, 1990s and 2000s
Famous quotes containing the word pop:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)