Taking Sides: Twee vs. Bubblegum

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Could someone also supply a simple definition of each pointing out the differences and similarities?

A Nairn (moretap), Saturday, 2 November 2002 17:18 (twenty-two years ago)

bubblegum = honest

twee = dishonest

jess (dubplatestyle), Saturday, 2 November 2002 17:33 (twenty-two years ago)

bubblegum = made to chart?
twee = made to be able to say "would have charted were it not for the 12-foot lizards"?

(haha i wrote 12-inch lizards first...)

mark s (mark s), Saturday, 2 November 2002 17:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Ah, but I have it on good authority that Ohio Express did in fact NOT have love in their tummy, and that the candy girl The Archies sang about did in fact NOT get them going now. How ya like them apples?

Daniel_Rf, Saturday, 2 November 2002 17:40 (twenty-two years ago)

(i don't entirely believe this distinction, incidentally)

mark s (mark s), Saturday, 2 November 2002 17:40 (twenty-two years ago)

I've no idea what's bubblegum and what isn't (or what's twee and what isn't) but anyway -

Similarities: emphasis on melody, child-like outlook

Differences: Bubblegum also emphasises a danceable if basic beat, usually, and its lyrics tend to be more general (eg. broadly about love with no specifics) or silly. Twee tends to have more attention to detail in its lyrics - often tiny or whimsical details the audience might appreciate or identify with.

Tom (Groke), Saturday, 2 November 2002 19:13 (twenty-two years ago)

bubblegum is often twee, but not all twee is bubblegum for a start. also bubblegum has more veiled oral sex references in it.

Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Saturday, 2 November 2002 22:17 (twenty-two years ago)

they differ because everyone here recoils in fear at the threat of being called twee but bubblegum seems more innocuous.

keith (keithmcl), Saturday, 2 November 2002 22:25 (twenty-two years ago)

jess OTM. even though twee lyrics can be sincere and bubblegum lyrics are often just tripe written to the music, it's the energy and impulse behind bubblegum that is honest and convincing.

twee is almost always contrived in some way or heavy handed though the basic sentiment behind the lyrics may be true.

Aaron A., Sunday, 3 November 2002 00:41 (twenty-two years ago)

Yay Kittenhood as potential rebellion discussed here

mark s (mark s), Sunday, 3 November 2002 01:05 (twenty-two years ago)

STONEHENGE!!! Beware the twelve inch lizards...

Bubblegum = CLASSIC

Twee = wanna be bubblegum with the SUCK turned all the way up

kate, Sunday, 3 November 2002 01:21 (twenty-two years ago)

which is more honest is up to debate.

bubblegum is "hipper", ironic love 101. bubblegum is also a producer oriented product, perhaps pop in its purest uncut form, the band irrelevant or perhaps no more relevant than the speaker or the microphones or whatever knobs need turning to produce the candy for consumption. even the bubblegum acts that were "real", many times weren't like Ohio Express, the actual band forced to tour while the session musicians got to work.

both bubblegum and twee or self consciously trying to seek some sort of naivete. one simplely has the pretense of "art", while the other does not.

jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 3 November 2002 01:58 (twenty-two years ago)

bubblegum wasn't hipper in its inception, though, and defining it *purely* through indie "ironic" eyes is a bit strange: this sector of the audience — insofar as it exists at all ("ironic" liking is anyway almost always a mask for genuine liking you're a bit embarrassed abt) — was absolutely not on the minds of (for example) don kirshner, or chinn and chapman... the new york punkers who celebrated bubblegum (shared taste for t.heads, television, blondie AND the ramones) were all non-ironic fans, pushing back towards this style bcz it was RIGHT not bcz it was cool...

(jonathan king is a more complex semi-pathological example, because i think the layers of self-loathing actually did manifest as a kind of deliberately jarring manifest cynicism: you sometimes wonder if he wasn't trying to make records so shamelessly "manufactured" that EVERYONE hated them, and then when they charted, proving to himself how worthless everything was, especially himself... the weird thing is, king doesn't seem to attract "ironic"-style support...)

mark s (mark s), Sunday, 3 November 2002 02:15 (twenty-two years ago)

also joe meek?

jess (dubplatestyle), Sunday, 3 November 2002 02:24 (twenty-two years ago)

well, meek wd only have been called "bubblegum" retroactively, cz he wz record-making b4 the rock vs pop thing became a way of selling records at all... i get the impression meek was deadly serious abt his work, and oddly innocent in his attitude towards chart success, back in a more innocent time (?), but i suspect he cd only have flourished in the quite parochial and more to the point quite small pre-beatles uk music industry

(unless you mean joe meek is another jonathan king, in which case, no i don't think so... )

mark s (mark s), Sunday, 3 November 2002 02:32 (twenty-two years ago)

as for irony, mark, my intent, though unclear, was the present cult of bubblegum, which tend to be more garage rockers and Johnny Thunderists than "indie" -- at least hear in the U.S. As for the US scene, I dont think I would include Television as being part of the bubblegum NYC mob, though the Ramones and Blondie are OTM. Definitely, though, bubblegum was a part of the mix. and certainly, in the case of bubblegum, I wouldnt disagree with you that many times ironic love is just a ruse to disguise someone feeling guilty about liking something they think they shouldn't enjoy because of social pressures.

jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 3 November 2002 02:39 (twenty-two years ago)

it was mostly the layers of self loathing thing that triggered it (knowing little about meek's actual life), but i take yr point regardless.

jess (dubplatestyle), Sunday, 3 November 2002 02:41 (twenty-two years ago)

didn't television play live covers of some classic bubblegum song — "red light stop" or some such? sorry, my brain is on hold and copy of the blow-up fell behind my workdesk when i was going to copy it for julio and i can't be bothered to dig it out again as it's 3 in the morning here

i don't think meek's self-hatred — if he did hate himself, which i guess he maybe did, seeing as he shot himself — feeds into his records at ALL

mark s (mark s), Sunday, 3 November 2002 02:49 (twenty-two years ago)

no, 'red light stop" isnt on The Blow Up-- i was more thinking about the music, the influence of bubblegum being more prominent in the Ramones and Blondie. You're not thinking of "Fire Engine" by the 13th Floor Elevators are you? It's on The Blow Up but with a different title and credited to Verlaine. It might even be "The BLow Up", but I can't remember.

jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 3 November 2002 03:01 (twenty-two years ago)

for one of the bubble-punk missing links here, look to richard gottherer & his amazing "instant record" philosophy. mastermind behind The Strangeloves and a lot of buddha/bang stuff - also produced Blondie, Richard Hell. and i think was involved with getting a bunch of the cbgb's bands signed. i just mean to say that it's not all abstract - some of the connections btwn bgum punkrock are human beings! also kenny laguna & chapman-chinn...

Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Sunday, 3 November 2002 03:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Bubblegum = It's saccharine and I like it
Twee = It's saccharine but I don't like it

Joe (Joe), Sunday, 3 November 2002 03:30 (twenty-two years ago)

also, the New York Dolls had a fascination with pre-bubblegum like the Shangri-Las to the point of having Shadow Morton produce their second album.

jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 3 November 2002 03:39 (twenty-two years ago)

but i think twee is less of a genre than bubblegum, bubblegum appears to relate to specific bands like 1910 fruitgum co. or the archies or partridge family whereas all sorts of bands are labeled twee whether it be the field mice or mùm. it seems to be if a band is thought to be 'contrived' in the sense that they are shy or naive or child-like then they are then of the insufferably twee. it's sickening when people only gravitate towards the twee and try to uphold it's ridiculous posturing but also funny when those who think they are hard denigrate some bands for being less than obnoxious.

keith (keithmcl), Sunday, 3 November 2002 04:01 (twenty-two years ago)

It's really strange ... (people are going to read this as shameless self promotion, but hey, as certain other posters would say, don't read it you don't like me...) ... but it's odd how many reviews I've read of our album that seem to be platforms for dissertations on the differences/similarities between Pop! (what we are calling bubblegum here) and Indie-Pop (what we seem to be calling twee here).

It's one of those things that I *know* what the difference is, but I have an incredibly hard time articulating it. (Even when I don't have 5 or 6 white russians in me)

Many of the things that I accuse "twee" bands of, I'm guilty of myself: shameless retro-homage, deliberately simple or "childlike" approach to melody and subject, etc. These are all Bubblegum elements. Yet what offends me in indie-pop time and time again is the willful incompetence. Bands who play with punk indifference to their craft because they *want* to, not because they *have* to, and that offends me.

Reminds me of dichotomy I read once a long time ago:

Pete Townsend, sitting in a plush hotel room, writing "My Generation" and trying to make it sound like it was written in a garage.

Debbie Gibson writing (god, what was DG's hit? can't remember...) in a garage, and trying to make it sound like it belonged in a plush, four star hotel.

In this analogy, the former is Twee, the latter is Bubblegum.

kate, Sunday, 3 November 2002 11:21 (twenty-two years ago)

jack i have been cudgelling my brains this morning to recall what cover it was: maybe it IS "fire engine", which hardly makes my point!! i guess what i wz getting at wz that NY punk in 1975/6 wz actually *not* defined by any stylistic similarity, but instead by an ancestor-worship shift, from Rolling Stone-approved Rock Greats to, well, at-that-time-uncelebrated chart pop, really — and that even Television, who've often seemed the odd ones out in mid-70s NY terms, given their aesthetic parameters, at least shared this.

I wz thinking of including the Dolls in my list, but like you maybe bridle at filing the Shangri-Las under "bubblegum", at least w/o caveat. On the sleevenotes to my copy of the Shangri-Las grst hits — a mid-70s compilation — it says that Pete Townshend says that "Past Present Future" is the greatest record ever made, so maybe by the apparent consensus defn of twee on this thread (supposedly self-conscious rockworld recreation of supposedly un-self-conscious pop-manufacture of an earlier era) Kate ist k-korrekt!

mark s (mark s), Sunday, 3 November 2002 13:32 (twenty-two years ago)

i have no problem with the Shangri-Las being ancestors of bubblegum -- if anything, they are a proto type until Don Kirchner finally realized the flaw in the plan, eliminating the problem, which was having a real band -->the Archies. Phil Spector would also be a contributor to the early sixties formula that perhaps fully blossomed as Bubblegum, though I think Phil might shoot me in the head for saying that. Girl groups are step in the direction, a fact played off of by Blondie and the New York Dolls, who incorporated it in both their music and images. Certainly, I agree with the Ancestoral Worship too, but that shift is important to any scene no matter what music it belches forth -- the identity chosen by selecting from the buffet of the past to create an Individualized History -- fingers pointing transforming almost forgotten bands and producers and songwriters into undead movers and shakers. I should also add, that I fully approve of Creating One's Own Lineage -- it's an excellent strategy to defeat the opression of what has been done before that haunts many musicians, writers, etc. The past is raw material at anyone's disposal.

jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 3 November 2002 17:48 (twenty-two years ago)

i should also add, that I don't really find twee and bubblegum that comparable as genres. The process used to reach the faux Innocence seems different to me, just as the motivations behind each. Also, the sounds don't seem similar to me at all, especially if we are using things such as the Pastels or the Field Mice, etc to represent Twee. Twee, in many cases, possesses a certain amount of primitivism (conscious or unconscious) that lacks the sophisticated sheen of bubblegum.

jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 3 November 2002 17:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I always saw it more as
bubblegum = music capturing the moment of elation when love seems perfect
twee = music about how that moment was really nice and all but really, who were we kidding -- after all i'm too insecure for you and i tried to be someone i wasn't but it was doomed and this whole "love" thing is a big hoack by evil corporations or something because, really, everyone else pretends they're in it but they can't be because people are y'know flawed and shallow and evil and...sigh remember that one time?

Sterling Clover (s_clover), Sunday, 3 November 2002 20:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Who is "bubblegum" today? (Because, I mean with how sexualized teen pop has gotten, it doesn't seem to have near the same innocence as it once did.)

Also I hate when people bring "honesty/dishonesty" into it. It seems about as stupid as "cred."

bnw (bnw), Sunday, 3 November 2002 22:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Bubblegum was highly sexualized too -- see Tommy Roe or most of the other bubblegum songs really. Bubblegum breaks at the seams with infantilized sexual references.

jack cole (jackcole), Sunday, 3 November 2002 22:58 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah - and of course bubblegum was pre-video age so there wasn't much scope for turning the sexual nudge-nudges in the lyrics into big DO-YOU-SEE Britney-style extravaganzas. The lyrics of today's teenpop are still mostly (pioneers like Xtina aside) innuendo-laden rather than explicit.

Tom (Groke), Sunday, 3 November 2002 23:11 (twenty-two years ago)

twee is the most intelligent and sincere hybrid of rock and punk. humans are by nature calculating and dishonest. so the most sincere expression of human nature is calculated dishonesty. the only real love is unrequited and real life is constant misery. stupid rawk bands gather all signifiers of sincerity together (i'm always happy, in love, and i don't care), making them the biggest liars. however, the biggest lies make the best parties.

twee avoids the stigma of musicianship by depending on legions of bedroom pop bands writing one or two utterly classic songs apiece through sheer luck and numbers. bubblegum is completely the opposite. it uses legions of musicians and channels them into a small number of bands because it's more profitable.

bubblegum is outside the dimensions of rock and twee because the instigators of bubblegum are anonymous and have no interest in sincerity. it doesn't matter at all... bubblegum is songs about girls in het love written by old gay men who only cared about money. you can like it but if it moves you it's an accident, like a sunset with clouds that look like jesus.

twee is the highest form of modern rebellion because it rejects irony, leaving it defenseless. rock always embraces irony, because it is not able to think and needs a defense that can be employed without having to think (i was just kidding, i didn't mean it). this is the epitome of wimpiness. bubblegum only cares about rebellion or irony if it can sell more product.

you can not ever discern between twee and bubblegum based on sound. if not being able to play instruments is profitable, bubblegum will do it. sometimes a twee band has members who can play instruments.

aperitivo siesta, Monday, 4 November 2002 01:32 (twenty-two years ago)

agreed!!

ep, Monday, 4 November 2002 02:26 (twenty-two years ago)

twee is rock and twee is hardly unaffected by irony (see Vaselines).

jack cole (jackcole), Monday, 4 November 2002 02:44 (twenty-two years ago)

agreed!!

haha, simon says.

donut bitch (donut), Monday, 4 November 2002 02:45 (twenty-two years ago)

There are some good points in there, though (particularly the luck and numbers thing). I stand by the Mark-named "yay kittenhood" thing from the other thread; maybe it's time-and-place dependent, but in a pop context where the very-reasonably norms are to sound either pleasant and polished (chart-pop) or raw, angry, and fierce (rock, punk), a lot of people are bowled over and very taken with the sudden discovery of a pop world whose aesthetic somehow twists elements of each together. I said on that other thread that I thought the central idea of indiepop was a good one, or at least a rich one, and threads like this only reinforce that idea for me: we can spend so much time trying to unravel exactly what the deal is with it, and each time I try to contribute to that conversation I still find it difficult to express exactly what it is about the genre that so surprised and enamored me for a little while.

(I think I also said on the other thread that indiepop is very much "lifestyle music," which I think is an aspect that's worth dealing with: it almost immediately developed its own social world whose values rejected and combined those of rock vs. pop in basically the same way as the music. Both musically and aesthetically, it found this back-end connection point: sort of like how mid-period Cure took gloom and desperation to this point where it became desperately giddy pop again, like that connection between positive and negative infinity on a number line, indiepop took punk and pop back around until the dichotomies collapsed and it became this bizzare and really striking everything-and-nothing endpoint.)

Also Jack: the Field Mice are a very poor example of something that lacks "sophisticated sheen" -- in fact the whole thing about Sarah and UK indiepop in general was that a lot of the records were actually meant to sound somewhat slick. ("Let's Kiss and Make Up" versus "Indian Summer.")

nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 4 November 2002 07:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Also I think the "honest / dishonest" thing is unproductive, yes, and mentioning "Indian Summer" has reminded me that I bridle at a lot of indiepop being called "dishonest" -- part of that "rich idea" was that all of the childish airs and talismans could somehow collapse things back to the childish state before we even had proper concepts of "cool" and "not-cool," allowing people to be as unselfconsciously and sort of rebelliously honest as kids can be. I'm thinking of Beat Happening, here: sometimes I think everyone wants to remember a lot of this stuff as just being cute songs about kittens and girls, but -- just as a little kid can tell you a story about bunnies that actually reveals something serious and scary -- most of it wasn't.

And when it was self-conscious, on some level this stuff came across as a big dare and a big fuck-you. I like this in music, conceptually speaking: I like that after the attitudinal posturing of punk people could play cute little pop songs that look you in the eye and say "yeah, we know what you think," and in doing so just sort of revel in the glory of bashing out everything basically pleasant about pop songwriting that we're all trained by the time we're 12 is supposed to be the pinnacle of lameness to enjoy.

(NB I will probably take this all back tomorrow.)

nabisco (nabisco), Monday, 4 November 2002 08:01 (twenty-two years ago)

i think it was entirely self-conscious, all the time. heh, nitsuh i don't know if you could live here and think otherwise.

i like the idea of beat happening as a conceptual gesture. i'd rather have my skin stripped by beavers before i ever had to listen to them. and i think their fallout is deadly.

jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 4 November 2002 08:08 (twenty-two years ago)

i like the idea of beat happening as a conceptual gesture.

This is the funniest thing I have read on ILM for a long time.

Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Monday, 4 November 2002 10:03 (twenty-two years ago)

mark s, yr wrong abt meek.

Denise Lambert, Monday, 4 November 2002 10:09 (twenty-two years ago)

re. the post from aperitivo siesta (assuming it has something to see with the siesta/reverie label): aren't the if/reverie releases more into the bubblegum than the twee scene? i mean, a producer's mastermind creating faux bands and artists with a great sound for a purely aesthetic experience?
mind you, i love those records as well (not as much as i love the pastels, though).

joan vich (joan vich), Monday, 4 November 2002 14:19 (twenty-two years ago)

Beat Happening wrote plenty of bubblegum-style lyrics. There's a straight line between the 1910 Fruitgum Co.'s barely-subliminal come-ons and Calvin's "let's go do some apple coring."

Personally, it was never the flowers/kittens aspect of "twee" that grabbed me as much as the catchy melodies and DIY-style playing and production. I still have a very high tolerance for this stuff, even though most people I know have gone back to hating it again...

Mike Appelstein (mike a), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 01:17 (twenty-two years ago)

i've always thought of indie-pop (calling it twee is one of those examples of 'reclaiming' a word, unless you're being too narrow) as an evolution of punk-rock, of its attitude and ethics. in that sense, i'm still into indie-pop, of course.

joan vich (joan vich), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

evolution in the sense of betrayal, heh

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 14:27 (twenty-two years ago)

mark you're wrong, partly for the reasons of contrariety nabisco gives above.

Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 14:35 (twenty-two years ago)

yes i wz dicking around (besides, punk = distilled essence of the necessity of betrayal)

mark s (mark s), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

well shame on you then

Tim (Tim), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 15:17 (twenty-two years ago)

i've always been into betrayal (music-wise).

joan vich (joan vich), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 15:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I hate anyone who talks about tweeness as a good thing.

DV (dirtyvicar), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 23:15 (twenty-two years ago)

don't you see they've won then, dv??!?!

jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 23:17 (twenty-two years ago)

one thing that i think is interesting is that everyone immediately took my "honest/dishonest" schism as a value judgment, which it wasn't meant as at all.

jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 23:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Is the honesty/dishonesty just another way of saying that bubblegum is naive, whilst twee is cynical trying to achieve naiveity? The old "a foot under the brain of every cynic is the heart of a romantic" cliche.

Dom Passantino (Dom Passantino), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 23:32 (twenty-two years ago)

well, dom i think it's partly that, but mostly that i don't see the cynicism/irony/distance as a bad thing necessarily. i don't think bubblegum is naive at all. i think it's honesty stems precisely from the fact that it's so fucking anti-naive, at heart.

jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, 5 November 2002 23:39 (twenty-two years ago)

bubblegum - cheap

twee - cute

Callum (Callum), Wednesday, 6 November 2002 00:53 (twenty-two years ago)

I'll take cheap, then.

Sean (Sean), Wednesday, 6 November 2002 01:34 (twenty-two years ago)

three years pass...
Nursery rhymes about characters that could have been on children's TV, arranged with sitars and mellotrons and lots of details, vs. nursery rhyme like songs about love, arranged in a way as schmalzy as possible.

I take twee any day.

Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 00:29 (nineteen years ago)

OMG, I WILL NOT TOLERATE THE EXISTENCE OF TWEE - THAT MAKES ME KING OF TEH INTERNET!!!

timmy tannin (pompous), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 01:28 (nineteen years ago)

I don't see a lot of classic bubblegum as being schmaltz at all.

Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 02:54 (nineteen years ago)

Great threads, these indiepop outings!

the bellefox, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 15:50 (nineteen years ago)

There's no such genre as twee tho is there? What is it?

You'll Never Put a Better Bit of Butter On Your Knife (Dada), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 15:56 (nineteen years ago)

http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/features/article347296.ece

the bellefox, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 15:56 (nineteen years ago)

Twee is The Smiths? I prefer bubblegum.

You'll Never Put a Better Bit of Butter On Your Knife (Dada), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 15:58 (nineteen years ago)

I just wanted somewhere to put that link.

the bellefox, Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:23 (nineteen years ago)

From way up thread: It was Talking Heads who used to cover "1-2-3 Red Light".

C0L1N B... (C0L1N B...), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 16:40 (nineteen years ago)

Apparently there is a genre called Twee, although true twee was the twee UK psychedelia of the 60s, spearheaded by Syd Barrett, The Idle Race, Nirvana, Kaleidoscope and some of McCartney's Beatles-material.

Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 22:14 (nineteen years ago)

when i think twee, i think "cats playing kazoos"

gear (gear), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 22:15 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.playthingstoystore.com/istarimages/p/p-940!350.jpg

bijoux (bijoux), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 22:57 (nineteen years ago)

I can't imagine David Byrne singing "1-2-3 Red Light." It's kind of emotive.

Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 2 May 2006 23:43 (nineteen years ago)

In what seems like a non-David Byrnian way, anyway.

Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Wednesday, 3 May 2006 00:02 (nineteen years ago)


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