There’s a moment on Pour a Little Sugar on It: The Chewy Chewy Sounds of American Bubblegum 1966-1971, a new box set, that pretty much captures everything wonderfully inane about one of pop’s most derided genres. Start with the beyond-silly name of the band, the Kasenkatz-Katz Singing Orchestral Circus, which wasn’t even a real group. Then revel in the song, “Quick Joey Small (Run Joey Run),” a crude, minimalist stomp about a convict who escapes prison after his girlfriend sends him “a file baked inside a fudge cake.” The sing-songy chorus – “Run, Joey, run, the hounds are on your trail!” – is equally ridiculous. Now try to get the damn irritating head out of your head once you hear it; as with all great bubblegum, it’s almost impossible to do.
Such was the warped genius that ran amok on the radio and the pop charts for a few brief years back then. Rock was growing increasingly somber and arty, sometimes topical, but younger boomers just entering kindergarten didn’t want to know which Fourth Street Bob Dylan was referring to. They craved simple romps for themselves and their fellow grade-schoolers. And, as with boy bands three decades later, an entire industry arose to address that market, spearheaded by the likes of pop impresario Don Kirshner and the production duo of Jerry Kasenetz and Jeff Katz, who also named the genre.
One of the first major bubblegum hits, “Simon Says” by the 1910 Fruitgum Co., set the template: A decidedly unprofound group name and a circus-organ groove and school-playtime lyrics that would never have been found dead on an Iron Butterfly album. Most of the hits that followed had a similar jones for chipper choruses, lyrics that evoked food or teen crushes, and hooks (think the Archies’ “Sugar, Sugar”) that were practically scientifically designed earworms. It was rare for any of them to exceed three minutes in length, which explains how the compilers of Pour a Little Sugar on It were able to cram 91 tracks onto three CDs.
The box set isn’t just the most comprehensive bubblegum overview yet. Given the state of pop and rock in 2024, it’s also a timely reminder of what we’ve gained and lost since then, starting with rampant goofiness. It’s easy to imagine the auteurs who came up with band names like the Peppermint Trolly Company and Pastrami Malted – or songs like the Fun & Games’ “The Grooviest Girl in the World” or San Francisco Earthquake’s sitar-laced “The March of the Jingle Jangle People” – cracking themselves up over the dopiness of it all. (The sitar, also heard on the mall psychedelia of the Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine,” is another hallmark of bubblegum, adding that visiting-the-Maharishi touch.) Songs shamelessly recycle bits of riffs or chord changes or lyrics from another hits, foreshadowing the way K-pop would lift from varied genres to create Frankenstein-monster pop for a future generation. The way that bubblegum pop creators later disowned the name also foreshadows the way that one K-pop creator wondered if the “K” needed to be dropped so as to not hamper the music.
Starting with “Quick Joey Small (Run Joey Run),” you can also practically hear the creators of these songs trying to make them as slyly subversive as possible so that anyone over the age of 16 could be in on the joke. As compiler and writer David Wells’ liner notes explain, the Ohio Express’ “Chewy Chewy” wasn’t about indulging in candy, and we’ll leave it at that. With lyrics like “we will fly to the yellow ball of butter/Where the clouds are as fluffy as a parachute sail,” the Lemon Pipers’ “Jelly Jungle (of Orange Marmalade)” couldn’t possibly be about drugs, right? The masterwork here is Tommy James & the Shondells’ “I Think We’ve Alone Now.” Later generations know it from Tiffany’s Eighties remake, but James’ original captures the desperate ache of wanting to find a private place to make out, even if neither of your parents approve.
“I Think We’re Alone Now” is also one of the great pop rushes of its time, as are at least a dozen tracks here that have aged better than anyone would have possibly thought. A song concocted for a TV cartoon band based on the Archies comic, “Sugar, Sugar” was one of the most reviled songs of its time (although, as the liner notes explain, it was not rejected by the Monkees). But the nonstop chug of its arrangement feels pretty timeless, as does the way that the Ohio Express’ “Yummy Yummy Yummy” sounds more motorized and sarcastic than it did then. “Gimme Gimme Good Lovin,” by the studio-created Crazy Elephant (who were not Welsh miners, as initially announced), is the place where bubblegum met garage rock, and it’s a joyous place to be for those two minutes.
Pour a Little Sugar on It is also surprisingly educational. “Fa La Fa Lee” by Halfnelson, aka the artists later known as Sparks, now comes off as something that would have emerged from a college scene in the indie Eighties. You’ll encounter a cover of “Valleri,” which the Monkees cut first but was quickly remade, almost note by note, by the Pineapple Heard. And who knew that the cartoon series about the Harlem Globetrotters, the real-life, gravity-defying basketball heroes of the time, gave birth to an album of Globetrotters ditties, many co-written by Neil Sedaka? And that those soul knockoffs embodied a short-lived subgenre, rhythm & bubblegum?
As with many multi-label compilations, the vagaries of music publishing or licensing wreaked havoc with Pour a Little Sugar on It. The label didn’t get the go-ahead to include anything by the Partridge Family, the Banana Splits or the Royal Guardsmen, so, sadly, you won’t stumble upon “I Think I Love You,” “The Tra La La Song (One Banana, Two Banana)” or “Snoopy vs. the Red Baron” here. In their place are songs by more legit acts — as opposed to the obscure ones or studio-created ensembles that dominate the set — who took a bite of bubblegum now and then, even if they didn’t know it at the time. At first glance, the Velvet Underground’s “Who Loves the Sun,” the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby” and the Beach Boys’ “How She Boogaloed It,” their lo-fi rocker from Wild Honey, hardly seem appropriate for this set. But all three fit in better than you’d think, especially since “Cry Like a Baby” extends the genre’s electric-sitar fixation. (Melanie’s innuendo-heavy “Brand New Key,” on the other hand, still feels a bit out of place.)
Even at its most cloying, which is often, Pour Some Sugar on It rekindles a moment when pop was junky and disreputable, created by people more interested in making bundles of cash than expressing their innermost angst or working out their issues (like rockers and singer-songwriters of the time were). These days, of course, the scenario has flipped: Modern pop acts are the intense ones, and guitar bands like Måneskin and Greta Van Fleet are practically cartoon characters. Pour a Little Sugar on It makes you yearn for a time when pop wasn’t quite so burdened and fraught, and when, to quote the 1910 Fruitgum Co. again, a few goody goody gumdrops weren’t such a bad thing.