Pop music exists for new Kidz Bop songs
If you’re a parent raising a kid in this modern age, there’s a good chance you’ve developed an opinion — perhaps a strong one — about our era’s most prolific pop music group.
Kidz Bop.
In case this phenomenon hasn’t hit you (your ears or your wallet) yet, Kidz Bop is a group of squeaky clean but calculatingly hip kids in the late-middle-school to early-high-school range who sing sanitized versions of the latest pop radio hits, performances as inoffensive as they are bland. And they churn out a new album about every few months, covering songs by the likes of Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars almost in real time.
My wife is editor of Metroparent, a parenting magazine in Milwaukee, and gets promotional copies of the CDs. Would anyone actually pay for the albums, either on CD or download? They must be, since we’re now up to album No. 29, and the bopping kidz are out on their 2015 tour (presumably not with the original members, who must have aged out by now).
The strong opinions come when discussing whether Kidz Bop is good wholesome fun or a sign of the musical apocalypse. The tracks are not the kind of thing any sane adult would voluntarily listen to. If you’re like me, you’ve merely grown to tolerate it, but I don’t necessarily disagree with those who condemn it as homogenized crap.
I mean, that’s what it is.
And I don’t think the Kidz or their Simon Cowell-style producers mind. They’re laughing all the way to the bank.
I don’t listen to much pop music to begin with, except in those random circumstances when it happens to pass near my eardrums: On road trips when we’re changing stations out of boredom. Waiting for my clothes to be done at the laundromat. Eating dinner at Applebees (almost never).
It’s not unusual to hear the Kidz Bop version of a song before I hear the original, as was the case with Lorde’s “Royals.” And often, it’s the Kidz Bop version that becomes standard in my head, due to excessive repeats. For a while there, on the off chance I heard Pharrell singing his version of “Happy,” it sounded a bit … bopless.
And yet, the Kidz Bob revolution isn’t a simple case of the karaokization of popular music. The group is presented as if it is the original, or at least as if its personas can stand on their own. It seems no mistake that the original artists’ names are nowhere to be found in the CD liners.
Except (sometimes) in the songwriting credits. And that suggests an interesting upending of the typical pop music dynamic: Historically, pop singers were as likely to be singing material written by other people, people who specifically wrote it so that a big star would sing it. Now through Kidz Bop, a megawatt star like Taylor Swift can moonlight as a writer for hire and cash in a second time.
And for all you Kidz Bop haters, a well-written pop song still sounds good when channeled through a chorus of adolescent voices.
There’s a reason that every recent Kidz Bop album seems to have at least one Taylor Swift song. One Bruno Mars song. Something from Katy Perry or (going back a bit furthur) Lady Gaga. Those songs are catchy no matter who’s singing them.
“Happy” is the perfect example. Think of all the ordinary people who put together spoof videos, and they all made you want to tap your feet and sing along. The Kidz Bop version is no exception.
My middle son was obsessed with Katy Perry’s “Roar.” I can still hear him singing along in the backseat of our van.
I’m not sure he’s ever heard the original.
And don’t get me started on “Uptown Funk.” My sons couldn’t get enough of the Kidz version, just as the nation couldn’t get enough of Mark Ronson’s and Bruno Mars’ version. (Now my sons are on to “Shut Up and Dance With Me,” probably just because the chorus includes the phrase “shut up.”)
The greatest failing of this approach to pop music is that every song ends up sounding at least a little like the one before. Often the Kidz sing a song in chorus when the original artist sang it solo, a frustrating effect for anyone who cares about the individual voice.
And that voice can matter a lot. Take Maroon 5, for example. You can love em or you can hate em, but they would be nothing without Adam Levine and his pop-ready voice. It’s enough to turn a bland song like “Sugar” into something a tiny bit special. But give it the Kidz Bop treatment, and bland is all that’s left.
For adults, it’s become a kind of parlor game to tally how the lyrics have been changed to protect innocent listeners.
I imagine a producer, some middle-aged guy smoking a cigarette and sitting in an office building somewhere, seeing it as a challenge — how to take any edge or risk off a song and make it palatable for family listening.
The result is that Bruno Mars no longer asks you to fill his cup and put some liquor in it. No. “Put some water in it.”
Taylor Swift will write your name in her blank space, but instead of fearing you’re her next mistake, you’re just her “next date.”
This sugarcoating is perhaps taken to its extreme on the latest album, when the Kidz tackle the surprisingly difficult “Honey, I’m Good” by Andy Grammer. The song already has a lot going on in it, more than you might notice and more than you’d expect from a pop song.
“Nah, baby, you got me all wrong, baby,” the narrator sings. “I could have another but … I might not leave alone.” That’s a problem because, he says, he’s being true to the one he has at home. Should we celebrate his faithfulness? But why isn’t he at home now? Why is he out even talking to other women like this, one he’s willing to call “honey” and “baby”? And should we be concerned that he’s admitting it might only take one more drink for him to throw it all away?
I’d like to think the songwriters were in on this joke, which would make it damn funny.
(Unfortunately, the concept behind the official video to Grammer’s song suggests the message is a bit too sincere. )
And then there’s the Kidz Bop version. Suddenly, having “another” becomes simply “staying a while.” Where exactly has the singer been staying? Not clear.
And gone is the possibility of not leaving alone. Now we should be relieved that, with someone back at home, the narrator “should really call them on the phone.”
So the Kidz Bop version is itself unintentionally funny, except that it has changed so much that it’s sucked the essential meaning out of the song it is covering.
But my vote for the strangest and most troubling sanitization is in the song “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities. There’s one lyric that goes, “Even when we’re six feet underground, I know that we’ll be safe and sound.” But for the Kidz, it becomes, “even if we’re too far underground,” cleaning up a clear reference to death.
So the question becomes, how far should we go to protect our children from not just the naughtiness but also the seriousness of the world?
Because the greatest selling point for Kidz Bop is precisely that: You can let your kids listen to pop music without feat that they’ll hear a word or phrase that might be objectionable, or (heaven forbid) prompt an uncomfortable conversation about life and death.
I, for one, don’t go out of my way to have conversations with my kids about life and death. But it’s not something to shy away from, either. I came home recently with my oldest son, who is 5, and found a robin dead on our driveway, which made for a solemn moment, one that I hope taught my son at least a little about how to be respectful to all God’s creatures. There’s no reason to shield him from that.
As for music, I’m guilty of occasionally singing the Townes Van Zandt version of the Stones’ “Dead Flowers” to the boys at bedtime, because I know they’re too young to pick up on the druggie undertones and it’s kinda a soothing melody.
If parents buy the Kidz Bop albums for a worry-free musical experience, I can’t fault them. There’s a lot of crap out there on the airwaves. But good music captures part of the human experience, and that experience isn’t always happy or pretty. The rough edges are what make life and its musical depictions interesting.
Hopefully, the kids eventually will come to appreciate the real thing, both in music and in life.
