I had the chance to talk recently with "Sugar, Sugar"/"Rock Me Gently" songwriter—and, now, unlikely Kevin Drew collaborator—Andy Kim, with whom a planned 30-minute interview easily turns into 90. That, naturally, left me with far more material than could fit into this resultant RollingStone.com feature, and one detail that didn't make it into the final version is that—as this cutting-room-floor quote makes abundantly clear—you call Andy Kim's music "bubblegum" at your own peril:
"I’ll tell you something: when ‘Sugar Sugar’ came out, nobody wanted to play it. Eventually, someone started playing it out of San Francisco. And people were calling it 'bubblegum' and I was really pissed off, because if ‘Sugar Sugar’ is bubblegum, then ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and ‘She Loves You’ is bubblegum. ‘Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear’ by Elvis is bubblegum, ‘All Shook Up’ has to be bubblegum … so it really bugged me. The term came from Kasenetz and Katz’s version of 'Yummy Yummy Yummy I’ve Got Love in My Tummy' and Neil Bogart, who had the label, coined the phrase, but being put in that package pissed the shit out of me. And not because of anything other than the fact that, to me, ‘Sugar Sugar’ was my ‘She Loves You.’ It took Wilson Pickett’s version that sold a million records, it took Ike & Tina Turner, Bob Marley, and then Homer Simpson to make it classic! Language does change with time, and I appreciate it, but I think that wound is still healing. Not because I see myself as a great writer, I just saw myself being lumped into something. And because I revered those [Beatles and Elvis] songs so much, I wanted to be in that playground, and that playground told me, ‘Well…’ What’s interesting though, is it was 1969—the year of Woodstock, and the year of underground music, and the year of The Doors and all of that stuff, so I kind of get it in those terms. But it’s such a derogatory term that it really bugged me for a long, long time. And it still bothers me.
But here’s the cool thing: I’m a BMI writer, and Stars on 45 comes out, and it’s got Beatles songs, but it’s also got ‘Sugar Sugar’ on it, and it’s so well done. So I got a royalty statement where it said ‘KML’—Kim, McCartney, Lennon. And I still have it somewhere, just for the purpose of that moment!