I have two kids, and so I have to listen to lots of kids' music. Horrible, awful, miserable kids' music. Almost all of it is complete dogshit. All of the songs from Dora are horrible. All of the songs from Thomas the Tank Engine are puke. And whoever wrote the Bond-style songs for Special Agent Oso needs to be taken out by a grease dumpster and murdered in three special steps. These are songs designed to split your head open and spit inside your skull. I hate them. I hope they die.
The worst kind of kids' music is the kind that features actual children singing. I cannot speak for everyone on this, but the sound of children singing bad music in unison is worse than the sound of a man being tortured with a saw. This is why I can never listen to "The Living Years" or, even worse, "Another Brick In The Wall." Not only did they hire a bunch of dipshit kids to sing the verse, but they're all so painfully BRITISH. Is 'orribull, is wot it is! Children's music is so bad, that it completely warps your sense of taste. Once you've been subjected to it often enough, you'll find yourself happy to listen to pretty much anything that isn't children's music, or even children's music that doesn't sound quite as juvenile as other kids' music.
Case in point: When my kid demanded that we buy the new Kidz Bop CD, I was left anguished. Here was an entire CD of children singing. And not only were they singing, but they were singing all the shit that radio stations play that Americans go out of their way to avoid. The whole reason I have an iPod is so that Maroon 5 never comes near my precious ears. But they played "Kidz Bop" on the school bus, she loved it, and now she wanted it in the house. Fucking school bus. I would have preferred that the bus driver lead a group prayer.
Anyway, we bought Kidz Bop 21 and threw it in the CD player. Here is the Kidz Bop version of "We Found Love":
Now here's the original version, which you should watch, because Rihanna is not unattractive:
Because I've been subjected to so much kids' music, my first reaction when hearing the first cut above was, "Hey, that's not so bad!" To my ruined ears, there isn't much of a difference between these two tracks. The girl they got to sing the Kidz Bop version doesn't even sound like a girl. The rest of the album was produced in a similar fashion, and represents a vast improvement over Kidz Bop records of old (listen to this cover of Smashmouth's "All Star" if you don't believe me).
I found this music to be shockingly tolerable. I didn't even mind the "Moves Like Jagger" cover, which is FUCKED! I should have been protesting the track vehemently. I should have warned everyone that hearing anything spawned by Adam Levine makes me want to beat Adam Levine to death with a wire whisk. But NO! No, I danced around my dining room listening to that shit, willingly taking the abuse. I was like, "Wow! It sounds almost like the real thing!" But I HATE the real thing! They've someone tricked me into accepting a facsimile of dogshit! I'm at the point now where I'm GRATEFUL to be listening to an overproduced retread of a shitty Top 40 song. This is what the cabal of corporate encephalopods in charge of shitting out these records has reduced me to. If you hit me up with a Pantera album right now, I wouldn't be able to process it. I'd be like, "Oh, well that's not terribly appropriate in this setting!" I'm so goddamn lame.
If you're a smart parent (I'm not), you'll make sure that there's no such things as kids' music, and that there's just MUSIC. My kids like some real music, but they mostly like the kiddie dogshit. That's on me. I never should have opened that door. (NOTE: At least I was smart enough to forbid any kiddie music in the car. NEVER allow your kids to dictate the music in the car.) Good music ought to appeal to everyone of all ages. Don't corner yourself into being stuck with the Wiggles all day long. You'll never get out of parenthood alive.
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