They're Taking Over #03 - I'm Being Covered By Children

If there's one gag about Kidz Bop that's universally recognized, it has to be the way that it chooses to censor the songs it covers. About 20 years ago, I remember brainstorming something like a "Kidz Bop: Inappropriate Edition" where the Kidz cover "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, for example. In my young adult head, Kidz Bop was an extension of the overly censorious 90's, the shadow of Tipper Gore looming large over another piece of sanitized art. In reality, Razor & Tie had a very lackadaisical relationship to censorship, especially early on. I mentioned during the blog on Kidz Bop (2001) that there were only two censored lyrics. One cut the word "sex" and then failed to notice the word "sexy" elsewhere in the song. I found an AMA on Reddit with a former employee that revealed that production of the songs (and presumably lyrical modifications) essentially went through one person, and the majority of employees were responsible for just promoting the hell out of the albums. It's very unlikely the case to this day, but you'll have to stick with this series to find out why.

The biggest issues with what Kidz Bop chooses to censor wouldn't come until much later. In this why-are-the-adults-singing-most-of-the-time era, the bigger problem is inattentiveness to the lyrical content. The pop songs are far too sexed-up, as I've covered in previous entries, and changing a word here and there is not going to be anything close to sufficient in making the song kid-friendly. Even taking away the entire abortion theme of "Slide", you have lyrics like "your mom disowned you" that seem pretty upsetting to the target demographic. In Kidz Bop 2, the Kidz' cover of "Gotta Tell You" preserves the lyric "I want to get it on", which speaks more to laziness from the one guy in charge of checking the lyrics than anything else. And as Emily Panic pointed out in the Albummer episode that covered Kidz Bop 3 on this here website, the word "crunk" on the cover of "Family Affair" is uncensored and present roughly every 5 seconds or so. I don't know how much I should have expected, but for some reason I always had this image of overly concerned, extremely Christian parents overseeing the entire enterprise, and in reality it was two dudes and maybe some weird friend of theirs who didn't like second takes on recording.

Since I've mentioned Albummer, I'll offer my take on some of the things they discussed in the episode. First, Lucy posited that Kidz Bop was likely meant for weird adult men who liked listening to kids sing things poorly, and I personally find it very rude for her to call me out with a precision strike like that. Drew stated that "Kidz Bop is a commercial for vasectomies", and I'd like to assure the group that I had my vasectomy before embarking on this journey. The full crew concluded that the worst part of Kidz Bop 3 was the adults (yes) and theorized the entire enterprise is a scam to reach an untapped market (also yes). One thing I didn't think of prior to relistening was Drew's theory that the kid-sung portions were entirely chosen by what Razor & Tie could play in commercials. Before listening to the body of Kidz Bop's work, I would have thought this take to be overly cynical, but not anymore. If you want a long-form analysis of the album and its ramifications, definitely give Albummer a listen. But since we have limited space before getting into the songs, I'll offer this tidbit. Razor & Tie picks up their operations and moves Kidz Bop to New York City for Kidz Bop 4, so this is the final "we really didn't know what the fuck we were doing" album. What better way to thank this first crew than to make fun of them online nearly 25 years later?

[Album Link]

The Songs: Quality-wise, this album ranks as the twenty-second best of the series (through 53), which is the best an album will do until 2007's KIDZ BOP 11. Driving this strong performance are covers of "The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World (#17 overall), "A Moment Like This" by Kelly Clarkson (#51), and "A Thousand Miles" by Vanessa Carlton (#75). A surprisingly strong rendition of P!nk's "Don't Let Me Get Me" is undermined by the amount of self-harm theming is still present in the song (see below for more on that). Once again there is a solid cover of a Celine Dion song ("A New Day Has Come"). It's a very light entry for the Butt Rock Bloc, with only "Hero" by Nickelback's Chad Kroger occupying that space. The cover of "Wasting My Time" by Default is so poorly sung that I couldn't justify letting it hang as high as the rest of its ilk, and I think that this performance (by guess who, Arthur Jefferson) is the worst of any adult in the entire series. Fortunately for it, there are two whopper tracks in "Heaven" by DJ Sammy (itself a cover of a Bryan Adams song) and the previously teased "I Need A Girl (Part 1)" by P. Diddy. The instrumentals for "Heaven" are a teaser for the true mediocrity awaiting us once we get to the KB albums that cover EDM songs. The P. Diddy song warrants its own special discussion, and we will certainly get to that.

Most Apathetic: It's a bit surprising to me that this album is in the top 10 most Apathetic albums on my list, because I don't think any one song particularly jumps out to me. There are a couple of 8/10 ratings for "Dilemma" by Nelly and the aforementioned "I Need A Girl (Part 1)", and two 7/10s in "Can't Fight the Moonlight" by LeAnn Rimes and "Wasting My Time". There's a lot of strange deployments of the kids; Emily noted the "DANCE. DANCE." background bits of "Family Affair" to be extremely off-putting, and I agree. There's some bad adult rapping in "In The End" by Linkin Park, but that only hits a 6/10 thanks to the kids not totally ducking out of the song. Maybe everyone had a feeling that this would be their final performance on KB records, as this is the last one recorded in Nashville. Hard not to get a bit of senioritis in those circumstances.

Most Deranged: Amazingly, this turned out to be the sixth-most deranged album in spite of its relatively high quality in the overall rankings. There are two perfect 10s in "Wasting My Time" and "I Need A Girl (Part 1)"; the former for its hootingly awful adult performance, and the latter for its everything else. The cover of a cover of "Heaven" earns a 9/10 through its maddening, clearly-first-take instrumentals, and the children weirdly stating "we're in heaven!" sound like a Lonely Island gag. The 2002 edition of "Just A Friend" by Mario scored a 9 as well for being a truly unhinged song choice. The only other standout on the album is a cover of No Doubt's "Hey Baby", which includes a rap interlude that is beyond excruciating. Later albums would cut out rap interludes entirely from the music, and this could be one of the reasons why. A special shout-out to the otherwise pretty good "U Don't Have to Call" cover (originally by Usher), because it answers the age-old question "what would a theremin sound like if it was drunk."

Censorship Report: Beyond the crunkpocalypse of "Family Affair", the censor was paying just enough attention to turn "your ass" into "yourself" (though that could have mirrored a radio edit for all I know). Fitting my choice to dive into censorship this blog, this album really runs the gamut on modifications. We have a spot-on change in "Dilemma", where the n-word is changed to "fellas" and "fuck" is changed to "fight". We have logical ones like changing "damn" to "darn" in "Don't Let Me Get Me" (though again, hearing children sing about hating to be with themselves makes the light swear seem paltry by comparison). There are logical censorship choices with funny results, like in the cover of "Hey Baby" when "sex appeal" is turned into "crazy deals" (potentially a better lyric, take notes Gwen). And we have puzzling ones that I guess try to fit the demographic, changing John Mayer's "No Such Thing" from saying "high school" to "old school". As is often the case, however, the true censorship story is where it fell short. The chorus, which only features the kids long enough to loudly drone "I NEED A GIRL", includes lyrics like "I need a girl to ride, ride, ride / I need a girl to make my wife". Not that I can blame Kidz Bop for failing to predict the future, but Diddy is of course serving a prison sentence for the next 26 months at the time this article posts. One of the charges, on which I should probably note he was acquitted for legal purposes, involved flying a teenager to recording studio in New York, where she was (allegedly) assaulted. The various allegations stretch back to as far as 1990, so there were likely at least some rumblings of an idea to maybe avoid this person's music by 2002, when Kidz Bop 3 was recorded. It's not like Kidz Bop would do several Chris Brown songs after his domestic abuse allegations came out, would they? Will I even remember I made this reference in 22 weeks?

Wiki Fact You Should Know: Part of me wanted to make this the brief bullet point about "Heaven" also being in DDRMAX2: Dance Dance Revolution, mostly so I could struggle in some joke about E3 and KB. But I have to go with "This is the second album to feature hip-hop and rap, the first being KIDZ BOP (2001) with 'Summer Girls'." I know that "Summer Girls" technically qualifies as a rap song, but thinking of it as the first rap song of any series makes me want to lie down.

Best Song / Worst Song: The best song in my opinion, in spite of Jordan saying the adult singer sounded like a tracheotomy victim, is the cover of "The Middle", which received the coveted 1/10 in both Apathy and Derangement. The worst is easily "I Need A Girl (Part 1", and at this point it feels like beating a dead horse. The Albummer crew crowned the cover of "Whenever, Wherever" by Shakira as their least favorite, by virtue of two of them selecting it. Other selections were the covers of "Wherever You Will Go" by The Calling, "Hey Baby", "Hero", and "Family Affair" by Mary J. Blige. These occupied slots all throughout my rankings, so I think your personal relationship to a given song may have the greatest impact in ranking all of the tracks. That or the album thoroughly beat them into submission, and they named one of the only things they could remember.

Next Time: The New York-recorded era gets off to a rocky start with the first of the bottom-three Apathy score finishers, highlighted by a truly awful cover of "Bring Me to Life".

Previous Entries: [Introduction] [KB01] [KB02]