R+P Post 13: Influences and inspiration from art, fashion and culture

We have taken quite a few cues from certain aspects of culture when deciding on how to create our band. We noticed the popularity of "hipster" clothing- clothing designed to be outside of the mainstream yet still conventionally attractive, often through casual takes on formal clothing. The same artists who used this clothing style also use a certain pastel aesthetic, so we looked into it more, and discovered an otherwise unrelated movement that has a lot older roots but is still popular today- Bubblegum Pop.

We thus looked at the Bubblegum Pop movement from the '60s and '70s, some themes of which have come back recently. One typical example of Bubblegum Pop is "Sugar Sugar" by The Archies from 1969- it is very upbeat both in terms of the music itself and the lyrics and themes, and the video going along with it also contains a lot of positive imagery and pastel colours. Even from these roots Bubblegum Pop has been associated with intertextuality, as The Archies are a virtual band made up of characters from the popular Archie comic series predating the movement. Nowadays, the pastel colour scheme and upbeat style has been mirrored once more in popular music, for example Meghan Trainor's "All About That Bass." This ever present and popular Bubblegum Pop aesthetic is something we would like to tap into, as it represents the upbeat nature we are attempting to capture, as well as the colour scheme we are looking at, and it even allows for references to popular culture.

"Sugar Sugar" by The Archies. As you can see, the video and song oozes positivity, and we would like to tap into this positivity by appropriating some of the conventions of the Bubblegum Pop movement. Click to play.

"All About That Bass" by Meghan Trainor. A modern song that follows on from the Bubblegum Pop movement of the mid-to-late 1900s, it contains much of what constitutes Bubblegum Pop but updated to fit a modern audience, in that the video uses the pastel colours and the song uses upbeat themes, but the video has been updated from the older animation style and the lyrics focus on a contemporary issue, i.e. body positivity. Click to play.