Bubblegum Music: The Mix

At one point in my life, I would have classified these as Guilty Pleasures, the embarrassingly terrible musical nuggets for which you harbor inexplicable affection, yet keep hidden from fellow music snobs while extolling the virtues of Captain Beefheart and Pere Ubu.

But by the time you hit middle age, fuck it, it's a lot easier to just say I like what I like, be it Taylor Swift or silly bubblegum songs from the 60s and 70s. This is the stuff I used to hear on the radio back when I was first discovering the AM Top 40 as a kid in the mid-70s. And as my taste evolved towards classic rock, and later punk and new wave and college radio indie rock, this got more or less shunted aside. But I've always nursed a genuine love for bands like the Monkees and the Archies and Sweet, and at least derived some level of enjoyment from the sillier one- or two-hit-wonders of the genre.

Anyway, here's a pretty decent playlist. Unfortunately, there are a number of gaps on Spotify (particularly some of the music-oriented kiddie shows I used to watch, like the Banana Splits and Lancelot Link and Josie & The Pussycats, all of which featured music that is kinda essential to a truly complete bubblegum mix).

p.s. I've updated the mixes on my website to include this one.

A few videos, perhaps?