Bubblegum Bass
Located in 3 routes
Bubblegum Bass is ultra-glossy internet pop that makes synthetic sweetness feel extreme: pitched vocals, rubbery bass, plastic percussion, huge drops, candy-bright synths, advertising-jingle surrealism and pop hooks stretched until they become almost abstract. It is cute and abrasive at the same time. Compared with ordinary dance-pop, it sounds more artificial on purpose, as if the studio itself became the lead singer.
History
The style crystallized around PC Music, SOPHIE and related 2010s London/internet scenes, with A.G. Cook, Hannah Diamond, GFOTY, QT and Charli XCX making high-gloss artificiality central to new pop thinking. Bubblegum bass fed directly into hyperpop, digicore and experimental pop, influencing mainstream production as well as online microgenres. Its legacy is a new permission structure: pop can be emotional, commercial, ironic and alien all at once.
Defining artists
Essential listening
Sources
- PC Music histories
- Pitchfork and The Guardian hyperpop/bubblegum-bass retrospectives
- artist discographies
- internet-pop scholarship