Bubble Gum
Clairo
"Bubble Gum" comes from Clairo's earliest Bandcamp period, recorded when she was around sixteen, and it's a fascinating pre-fame sketch: brighter, poppier and more conventionally structured than the lo-fi murk she'd become famous for two years later. A clean, chiming guitar figure carries a straightforwardly sweet melody; the drums are programmed and thin; the mix is bedroom-flat with everything sitting at roughly the same volume, no depth, all charm. Her voice is younger here, higher and less breathy than the whisper-pop instrument she later refined, and she sings with an unguarded eagerness she would soon learn to withhold. The lyric works the title's central image — infatuation as something sweet, chewy, disposable, losing its flavor — into a teenage crush song that doesn't pretend to be anything more sophisticated than that. There's no irony armor yet. As an artifact it documents the Soundcloud-era ecosystem of teenagers self-releasing songs to a few hundred listeners with no expectation of anything, and it's the honest ancestor of everything on Immunity. Best heard as a curiosity, late at night, when you want to hear what someone sounded like before the world was watching.
medium
2010s
flat, bright, charming
American
bedroom pop, lo-fi pop. early DIY bedroom pop. sweet, innocent. Stays unguarded and eager throughout, a simple teenage crush with no irony armor. energy 4. medium. danceability 4. valence 7. vocals: young, higher-pitched, eager, unguarded. production: clean chiming guitar, thin programmed drums, flat bedroom mix. texture: flat, bright, charming. acousticness 3. era: 2010s. American. Late at night as a curiosity, hearing what someone sounded like before the world was watching.