Great news if your appreciation of Lukas Graham’s 7 Years is finally starting to wane – there’s a new 7 Years in town! It’s still 7 Years but this time it’s sung by 12-year-olds, one of whom goes by the name of Twinkle. Next week, US compilation series and YouTube channel Kidz Bop comes to the UK, and with it come Twinkle and three friends – the first British “Kidz Bop kids”.
Since 2000, the US phenomenon has shifted 17m units across 34 largely unlistenable albums, in which children recreate pop hits (plus strange choices such as Modest Mouse’s Float On and a hilariously bleak take on Kanye’s Heartless). The results are, let’s say, an acquired taste. “It’s not for everybody,” laughs Victor Zaraya, Kidz Bop’s LA-based VP. “But some kids really like songs sung by kids for kids. And you can’t dismiss that.”
Indeed they do like them, and for UK kids’ parents and grandparents Kidz Bop may ring a few bells. It echoes the dodgy Top of the Pops covers albums still populating UK charity shop buckets, for which session artists recreated hits of the 60s, 70s and 80s at such an alarming rate that nearly 100 albums were issued in just 14 years. There’s also a nod to Channel 4’s not-even-acceptable-in-the-80s show Minipops, which was axed after one series of very young children singing very questionable songs. One notorious performance of Sheena Easton’s 9 To 5 saw a five-year-old Minipop in a bathrobe singing “night time is the right time, we make love”.
Kidz Bop is, by comparison. squeaky clean. “What you’ve described sounds inappropriate,” gasps an incredulous Zaraya. “We try to put forward a wholesome image.” It’s true that while five-year-olds love a moan, that’s nothing on their parents, so the first UK album finds Little Mix’s Shoutout to My Ex with “sex” becoming “yeah” and “tattoos” rewritten as “bad news”. Even Justin Timberlake’s Can’t Stop the Feeling! – deemed appropriate for inclusion in the U-certificate Trolls film – contains several amendments.
This may partly explain the absence of any grime in the first UK Kidz Bop album but Zaraya is not ruling it out for future releases: “We tend to look at the biggest pop songs. But if there are top grime songs over the coming months maybe they’ll make it on to volume two.” In line with the brand’s persistent rampage through the US compilations markets, the next UK Kidz Bop album is already due for release in the autumn, so if you want to hear 12-year-olds bashing through Big for Your Boots there’s still time to get busy on Change.org.
The album Kidz Bop UK is out now
