It's true that it's growing fast.
Last week marked a milestone for children's brand Kidz Bop. The company's 50th album, Kidz Bop 50, a collection of sanitized children's covers of pop songs, has been released.
The song is sung by a small group of telegenic teenagers, who also appear in a carefully choreographed music video. The latest record features 38 songs, including Sabrina Carpenter's hit “Espresso” and Chapel Lawn's “Hot to Go!” and Tommy Richman's “Million Dollar Baby.”
Time passes quickly. In the case of Kidz Bop, which was released in 2001 and included millennial anthems like NSYNC's “Bye Bye Bye” and Blink-182's “All the Small Things,” it was the first to grow up with G-rated earworms. The generation is now in full swing. Adulthood. Kidz Bop is old enough to no longer be eligible for his parents' health insurance. It was an unlikely journey for one of the world's most unexpectedly successful copy bands.
However, don't expect references to sex, violence, or drugs, regardless of the song you're covering. (Kids Bop might amend that sentence and expect specs, warranties, and hugs instead.) And the music video, as always, is a great way to get kids right before nap time. It will be full of bright colors and energy, similar to a pizza party.
Or former Kids Bop performer and current “All sunshine and rainbows,” said the University of Cincinnati graphic design student.
Some changes to the lyrics are subtle. Take PSY's mega-hit “Gangnam Style,” which was covered on “Kidz Bop 23,” for example. The line “Hey, sexy lady!” It became. Hey, lady! ” for Kids Bop. The latest album includes Chapel Lawn's “Hot To Go!” Lyrics “I might be that person, or I might be your new addiction” are changed to “I might be that person, or I might be your new state.” .
Others border on comical. In “Telephone,” Lady Gaga sings, “I'm out in the club drinking that beer.” In “Kidz Bop 10,” that was changed to “Going out to the club and eating that grub.” (Apparently, kids love going to clubs for dinner.) Meghan Trainor's song “All About That Bass,” from her 27th album, sings, “All the boys are chasing.” “I got those dance moves” has been changed to “I got those dance moves.” ”Don’t worry. The boys still give chase, but in later poems “bring home the spoils” is tweaked to “bring home everything.”
Jayna Ellis, currently on the national tour of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical,” was part of the group that covered Traynor's songs. The trainer called them on FaceTime to thank them, she recalled. Years later, Elise would have the opportunity to remind Trainor of their interactions when she was a contestant on “American Idol” and Trainor was her mentor.
“Sometimes when I'm singing a song, I say, 'This is the Kids Bop version,' and why am I singing that?” said Elise, 23. (All former Kids Bop performers interviewed for this piece said they found themselves singing Kids Bop lyrics along with pop songs even as adults.)
But his 50 albums, many of which charted and sold millions of copies, have shown remarkable staying power. To put Kidz Bop into perspective, the company has dozens of Billboard Top 10 hit albums, putting them on par with artists like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. The series also includes touring acts who debuted about 10 years ago.
The streaming era has changed music listening habits, resulting in a decline in “Kids Bop's” chart success. Thanks to brand partnerships with companies like Lego and Chuck E. Cheese, the music has racked up billions of streams.
“The reason why Kids Bop continues to resonate and appeal nearly 25 years later is very simple,” said Kids Bop President Sasha Junk. “In one word, it's fun.'' And children love to hear other children sing. ”
Kidz Bop was the brainchild of Cliff Chenfeld and Craig Balsam, two lawyers who had previously founded independent record companies. 1990's Razor & Tie was known for its compilations at the time.
“We realized there was a gap between music for young children, such as Barney, and pop music that was unsafe for children ages 4 to 12,” Chenfeld said in 2006. told the New York Times. We thought it made sense to bring pop music to these people. (Chenfield and Balsam left Kids Bop in 2018 and could not be reached for comment.)
The song appealed to parents like Elise, who said Kids Bop was “all she listened to” before auditioning for the group. “Because I couldn't listen to anything else.”
Dana Vaughns, a 27-year-old alumnus and now an actor, has been a member of Kids Bop for about three years since he was 11 years old, and says he was happy without realizing that the lyrics he was singing were sometimes not original. spoke.
“Maybe they needed to adjust those lyrics anyway. I was that demographic!” he said with a laugh.
Children's versions of adult themes have existed for a long time. Many bookstores sell toned down versions of Shakespeare for children. But Kids Bop was the first major attempt to package pop music for children.
This occurred at a time when there was growing social concern over explicit imagery and lyrics in pop songs, especially rap music. In 1994, seven years before the first Kids Bop album was released, Congress held hearings on whether rap music could lead to violence. By the way, Kids Bop was mocked on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” We enlisted the help of rappers Ice Cube, Lil Jon, and other rap and hip-hop musicians to imagine kid-bop versions of some of their songs.
“For me, one of the things that Kidz Bop responds to is basically, to put it bluntly, any kind of cultural anxiety around black culture and black music as a potentially dangerous influence,” George said.・Loren Kajikawa, a music historian, said: University of Washington.
In some corners, removing profanity from songs and softening references doesn't make adult songs appropriate for children. A 2017 undergraduate paper published by the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs claims that Kids Bop “does not help children culturally, socially, or morally.” One of the professors cited in the study told Vox in 2018, shortly after the study was published, that Kids Vop “is abhorrent because it censors the language but not the content.”
Regardless, Kids Bop endured. And some of those singers are now – excuse me – becoming adult bop, forever shaped by their experiences with the group in their early teens. Some Kids Bop alumni have gone on to become successful adults as a result. The brand's most famous alum is Zendaya.
Grant Noche (22) is a musician based in Los Angeles. If I count them, they have recorded songs on 12 albums and performed 162 live shows as Kids Bop in the four years since they were 10 years old.
“Being in the studio and having all that experience really set me up for the rest of my life as an artist, as a musician, and in the music industry,” Knoche said. “And I would love to go back and do it again.”
In addition to preparing to celebrate their 25th anniversary next year, Kids Bop is touring, expanding their clothing line, releasing songs in other languages and deepening their involvement in film and television. In other words, it's no longer your mom's Kids Bop.
But the eternal question still remains: Does making pop music child-safe undermine the musicians' original intentions? That's not necessarily the case, said Andy Gershon, a professor at Syracuse University and former music industry executive who has worked with bands such as the Smashing Pumpkins.
“In this day and age, it doesn't dilute the art at all. If anything, it provides songwriters with another source of income for cover versions,” Gershon said. “And hopefully, when an 8-year-old hears the song '1979' and becomes a teenager, he or she will rediscover the Smashing Pumpkins version.”
