The Kidz are Alright, Part One
Parsley, 03/15/04
Back in the day, children’s choirs were everywhere. Before the church allowed women to take part in its doings, the only way to work higher voices into the vocal mix, short of castration, was to round up some prepubescent boys — which, let’s face it, they were pretty much going to do anyway — and slap some robes on them. Nowadays, the only place you’re likely to hear a children’s chorus is in a Satan-oriented horror movie, and classical vocal music doesn’t enjoy the same kind of fan base it used to. So did groups of kids just stop singing altogether when they stopped teaching Latin in the schools? Not quite. If you love that great old-fashioned boy’s (and girl’s) choir sound but prefer the musical styles of today you still have lots of choices. I listened to a bunch of them to help you make an educated decision. Here is part one of a four-part series.
Kidz Bop
You’ve probably seen the ads for these albums (there are five in the series so far) on TV. I know the first time I saw the commercial I was floored. The premise is mind-bogglingly simple and yet simply mind-boggling: the best-loved pop hits of the day performed by a mob of kids (or rather kidz). Since most Top 40 music in recent years seems to be written for a 9-year old audience, there’s something bizarrely logical about the Kidz Bop conceit. But according to that first Kidz Bop pitch, the Kidz are uniters, not dividers: parents will enjoy the soothing sounds of Blink-182, Hanson, Smashmouth, and the like, while their kids can sing along and identify with the totally awesome kidz on the CD. Peace will return to America’s minivans and station wagons.
Wait, what?
I find it unlikely that any adult would really be excited about more than a few of these tracks (though artists like Shania Twain, Ricky Martin, and the Barenaked Ladies certainly have their fans), and the idea that kids need to be told when and how to sing along leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but let’s put those issues aside for the time being and focus on the record itself (for this review I concentrated on the original Kidz Bop, but I also sampled selections from the sequels, Kidz Bop 2 - 5).
Anyone who bought Kidz Bop on the basis of the commercials would be disappointed from the very first track. The kidz do not sing the songs; rather, a rotating crew of adult singers covers the hits while the kidz join in for the choruses and a few spare hooks here and there. In the Kidz Bop rendition of “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls, the kidz remain silent except to shout “Slide!” or “Yeah!” from time to time, apropos to nothing. The backing tracks, needless to say, are not taken directly from the original songs but redone by what one can only assume is a whole farm of fancy synthesizers and embittered session men. The adult singers are about as good as you would expect, sometimes rising from the swamp of unremarkable mediocrity to come across as vaguely unnerving. By the time you’ve listened to a few hours of Kidz Bop (each volume is a densely packed 2-disc set), you will come to recognize their voices — like the Randy Newman sound-alike who covers Sugar Ray’s hit “Fly” or the “creepy uncle” type who’s often called upon to handle alt-rock and kiddie-punk numbers from “All the Small Things” to Creed’s “Higher.” If I were a parent, I would be nervous about letting my kidz sing backup for these guys.
I would go into more specific detail about the songs on this record except that I wasn’t able to listen to it the whole way through twice. I will say that as the Kidz Bop series progresses, the level of craftsmanship increases: Kidz Bop 5 is still terrible, but it at least sounds like it was made by professionals.
Now, I can’t prove it, but I have strong suspicions that the “kidz” are not even real kids. They may be a fully synthesized effect. I think that sort of thing is pretty easy these days. But it’s more likely that one or two singers (maybe even the same superstars who sing lead on the albums) had their voices processed, pitch-shifted, and duplicated to create a vanload of shrill hellions. Perhaps the “kids” in “Kidz Bop” is spelled with a Z for the same reason as the “cheese” in “Cheez Whiz.” Again, I can’t prove it. I’m sure there’s someone out there — a choir director or a recording engineer, who knows — who could figure it out right away. But I would not encourage that individual, or indeed anyone, to examine Kidz Bop too closely, or indeed at all.
Someone must be buying these albums. There are five volumes so far, plus a Christmas album, and the speed at which they are produced is staggering (lending further credence to my “fake kidz” theory). There are even imitators — the Disney-produced Super Star Kidz album includes a “kidz” rendition of a Liz Phair number, standing sad testament to squandered indie cred. But it is impossible to see how anyone could find the Kidz Bop sound appealing. Certainly the records have no artistic merit of their own, but even if you’re only looking for kitsch value or ironic pleasure, I think you’ll be let down. Assuming you can physically bear to listen to more than 15 minutes of the album (a real challenge), there’s still no expressive or creative effort whatsoever. Spectacularly awful music — The Shaggs, for instance — fails on an aesthetic level, but fails in a unique and compelling way, and so paradoxically ends up better in an artistic sense than technically competent but bloodless and generic music like a Journey album. Kidz Bop is purely a work of commerce, with no artistic content good or bad. The musical equivalent of a Super Wal-Mart.
Bob Dylan made me want to learn the guitar. The Minutemen made me think I could do something about the world. The Kidz Bop Kidz just made me want to get a vasectomy.
Next Installment: The Vienna Boys Choir Goes Pop.