Since I have small children, I end up watching a lot more kids programming than I’d have ever expected, along with the advertising.
Most of it is either food-related, toy-related or “As Seen On TV” stuff aimed at kids. But there’s one recurring set of ads that play that I just can’t fathom.
There’s apparently a series of compilation albums out there of contemporary pop music songs, but sung by kids. So you’ll have an album with a version of Taylor Swift’s “Bad Blood”, but sung by some kids, followed by a kid-rendition of Shaun Mendes’ “Stitches”, and so on.
I guess the thing I don’t quite get is… if you like the songs, go to Amazon and get the singles individually from the actual artists. If you’re not hung up on any particular song, why not just listen to the radio? What’s so compelling about hearing covers of current pop songs sung by children?
Apparently this is popular, because I think the latest is “Kids Bop 19”, so they’ve been successful enough to do 18 previous compilation albums, but for the life of me, I just don’t see why.
My kids like them. And I don’t have to run through the lyrics of, say Uptown Funk, in my head to make sure I don’t have to change the channel. As Ludovic said, the naughty stuff is switched out for kid-friendly stuff.
As this article explains, it’s a safe avenue for parents to allow their kids access to contemporary pop music. In my day there were the Minipops and Kids Incorporated, so the concept isn’t that new although the whole safety angle might be since pop lyrics are generally more explicit now than they were 30+ years ago.
My daughter (age 4) LOOOOOOVES Kidz Bop. (it’s a Z, you know, for added annoyance on my part)
Mostly the point of Kidz Bop is to make money, which they seem to be very successful at.
I don’t really hate it, I like pop music just fine and I’m fairly liberal about what my daughter is allowed to listen to. There are relatively few things that make me turn off the radio or the TV (for the video). So why does my daughter love the Kidz Bop versions so much, given that she’s allowed to listen to the real versions? I think a big part of it is that it’s the same group of teens (for a while) so there’s more consistency – she can recognize them in the videos and she knows dumb stuff about each one (there are little blurbs where they talk about their favorite pet or whatever). She’s 4, and they’re teenagers, so she sees them more as adults than fellow kids, so I don’t think their youth is a particular appeal. She still likes the originals just fine (as well as Miss Katy Perry and Miss Tay Tay), so she doesn’t see Kidz Bop as replacing them, it’s just more pop music for her to enjoy.
I’ve been a little surprised about what they cut/change in the lyrics and what they keep. Some things that I was sure would get cut have stayed in, and sometimes they make a change that I have to think about to figure out why it got the axe.
Similar to delphica my daughter seems to prefer the Kidz Bop versions of certain songs (although not all) to the original versions. I can’t quite figure out why, but hopefully she grows out of it.
My son had one of these albums and one of the songs on it I really liked. I had never hear the song before but thought the kids version was catchy. KidzBop - Latch
I thought I might like the original and found it was a song by Sam Smith.
When I heard the original I thought it was terrible and it would never be something I’d listen to.
I was Kidz Bop music aged in the 1970s and early 1980s, and I can’t imagine listening to that instead of the actual artists. I would’ve missed out on Bowie, Queen, Deep Purple, the Eagles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Boston, Van Halen, ZZ Top, the Clash, and the Ramones (all of which were in heavy rotation on the local rock station). Though perhaps Kidz Bop would’ve covered artists like Blondie, Olivia Newton-John, and Fleetwood Mac instead.
Isn’t this the norm in a lot of social circles (though maybe less so now than before?) There are a lot of “strict” thought-police type of parents out there. I used to know a lot of other kids who only listened to Christian music or similar stuff that was closely parental-approved. The Weird Al renditions of rock songs was as edgy as they got, everything else was considered a dirty swamp infested with satanic subliminal messages.
Yeah, I know everybody pretends they were right there with Sid Vicious back in 1977 … but honestly, a lot of very good popular music used to be dismissed as garbage or considered to be listened to only by the wrong kind of people.
I was born in 1969, so was 6 in 1975. I don’t think the Ramones were on the radio by 1975, but by the time I was 9 or 10, yes. I listened to the local rock station, and friends had older siblings that played the Ramones. My mom didn’t censor books or music.
There was an article on Slate a while back that talked about how the type of content considered too “questionable” for Kidz Bop has expanded considerably over the years. For instance, references to lipstick in Taylor Swift songs have been replaced.
… but honestly, a lot of very good popular music used to be dismissed as garbage or considered to be listened to only by the wrong kind of people.