Kidz Bop Kids bring some Bruno Mars 24K Magic on Kidz Bop 34 along with more covers of hit songs
The Kidz Bop Kids occupy an interesting place in culture. Razor & Tie, the record label that owns the franchise, started the Kidz Bop series in 2000 and the formula has not changed much since then ― take the biggest pop songs of the day and get a choir of children to cover it. Songs that have any cursing or a hint of adult content get censored so they can be played on children’s radio and on CD or streaming channels. The economics of the franchise clearly worked. After releasing two albums a year, Razor & Tie decided to start pushing out four albums a year in 2015, and Kidz Bop 34 is the latest installment.
Nowadays the Kidz Bop Kids have public names and personalities; a decade ago they were behind the scenes
Some songs clearly require more censorship than others and this time around the most embarrassingly censored track is the cover of “Closer,” originally by The Chainsmokers feat. Halsey. It starts “Hey, I was doing just fine before I met you / I drink talk too much and that’s an issue” and it does not get better. They “stand against the Rover” and “pull the sheets right off the corner of the notebook” that was stolen, so at least Kidz Bop Kids endorse that activity. They are also ok with playing Blink-182‘s “I Miss You” “to death” in Tucson. The cover of the PG-13 “Starving,” originally by Hailee Steinfeld, is also scrubbed: “you do things to my body heartbeat / I did not know I was starving till I tasted looked at you.” That is illogical and probably literally and seriously in support of cannibalism.
Thankfully, the remaining 12 tracks are not as terrible since the originals require less censoring and the Kidz Bop production machine does a fine job mimicking the studio backing tracks of the songs. The biggest outstanding fail on the album is the miscast Charlie Puth impersonator on the cover of “We Don’t Talk Anymore.” @charlieputh is almost a Kidz Bop Kid anyway, and the producers should have tried harder to cast a better karaoke singer.
Kidz Bop Julianna getting her Sia on
Then there are the highlights. Motivational songs always do well when the kids sing in harmony, and on Kidz Bop 34 we have “The Greatest” (Sia), “That’s My Girl” (Fifth Harmony), and an impressive performance of “Scars To Your Beautiful” (Alessia Cara). The mopey “This Town” by Niall Horan gets a sonically luxurious treatment and actually sounds better sung by the Kidz than by the erstwhile One Direction pretty boy. Bruno Mars‘s “24K Magic” gets sanitized a bit, but still succeeds as the jump-off to start the album. The best cover on the album though is “Gold,” originally by Kiiara, on which the Kidz and the producers succeed in imitating the complex bedroom trap of the original. They also articulate the lyrics more cleanly.
The end of the album has the most ironic cover, one of Adele‘s “Send My Love (To Your New Lover),” on which they sing how they’re “ain’t kids no more.” Unfortunately they are and in a few years the current gang will age out and there will be new Kidz on the block. For now though, Ahnya, Cooper, Julianna, Freddy, Isaiah, and Sierra can live the pre-teenage dream.