by Ed Masley - Aug. 1, 2012 02:58 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
As the father of three preteens in a culture ruled by Eminem and Britney Spears, Cliff Chenfeld started noticing that other parents were complaining more and more about inappropriate lyrics in the pop songs on radio.
But at the same time, music being made specifically for children was mostly "preschool stuff, Barney and that kind of thing," Chenfeld says.
That didn't leave a parent many options when it came to preteen-music programming.
And that gave Chenfeld and Craig Balsam, the business partner with whom he'd co-founded the New York label Razor & Tie, an idea.
"We thought, 'What if we came up with something that the kids who'd grown too old -- and too sophisticated -- for the preschool stuff would think was kind of cool, and the parents would think it was not too suggestive and inappropriate?' " Chenfeld recalls. "And we came up with KIDZ Bop."
The premise for KIDZ Bop is simple yet wildly effective: Take the biggest pop songs of the day and hand them over to a group of kids to sing while cleaning up any questionable lyrics.
"It worked for the kids," Chenfeld says, "because they were listening to pop music, and it was aspirational as well for them in that the songs were being sung by kids like them. And it worked for the parents because they knew that the kids were not going to be listening to anything that was inappropriate."
Nicholas Raclaw, 8, of Tempe, and his sister Abby, 7, have been KIDZ Bop fans for several years.
"Some songs are like ...," Nicholas says, then pauses.
"Inappropriate," Abby volunteers.
"Inappropriate for younger kids," Nicholas says. "And 'KIDZ Bop' is the same song with different sayings."
The Raclaw siblings also like that kids are doing all the singing.
"It makes me want to sing," Nicholas says, "because other kids are singing. It's like they're singing with you."
Low-key start
The KIDZ Bop revolution started small.
Released in 2001 boasting kid-friendly covers of songs by Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Blink-182 and 15 other artists, "KIDZ Bop" peaked at a respectable if hardly earth-shattering No. 78 (although it did top the Kids Albums chart). Four years later, "KIDZ Bop 7" cracked the Top 10 on the proper Billboard album charts, the first of 15 albums in the KIDZ Bop line to do so.
Released in mid-July, the latest volume, "KIDZ Bop 22," debuted at No. 3, the fifth consecutive release to go Top 5.
With total sales exceeding 13 million, KIDZ Bop is the No. 1 kids-music brand -- and has been for the past 10 years.
In 2010, Chenfeld and Balsam expanded the brand to create a more fully immersive youth-culture phenomenon, launching KIDZbop.com, a monitored social network and video-sharing site for kids and tweens.
A year later, the website hosted KIDZ Star USA, a talent contest that was won by Kiana Brown of Ahwatukee, at the time a freshman at Mountain Pointe High School. Now, the KIDZ Bop Kids are on their first tour (with Brown and Ethan Bortnick).
Choosing songs
Not every pop song has a chance to be rewritten as a KIDZ Bop standard.
When selecting a song for the series -- for which the label does not need the artist's permission -- Chenfeld says, "It's gotta be something kids would like. And it's gotta be something, content-wise, that parents can feel good about.
"We also want to make sure that the artist that originally sang the song is not associated with something particularly awful."
Given that the series regularly sanitizes lyrics, one might wonder what it takes to cross that line where KIDZ Bop doesn't want to touch it.
"You can only sort of slightly tweak these things," Chenfeld says. "If the song is inappropriate, you can't do it. But if the song is great and has one word or phrase that's a little suggestive, but the theme of the song and the idea of the song is fine, then we might look at that."
In the case of "Till The World Ends" by Britney Spears, rather than singing, "If you want this good bitch / Sicker than the remix / Baby, let me blow your mind tonight," the "Kidz Bop 20" version has a young girl singing, "If you want this good dish / Sicker than the remix / Baby, come on wave your hands tonight."
It can be a real challenge for KIDZ Bop, Chenfeld says, "because pop music has gotten more and more suggestive in the last five or six years."
"So there's a lot of great songs you want to put on there, and you can't."
KIDZ Bop's providing a filter was one of the draws for local mom Shakira Norman, whose daughter is KIDZ Star USA winner Kiana Brown.
"Now that she's older," Norman says, "it's not an issue. But when she was younger, that was a definite draw for the CDs, because a lot of songs unfortunately have ideas you don't want your kids listening to at the age.
"So it's nice to be able to listen to something that's more age-appropriate, where the kids can still jam out to the beat."
It could be argued that the reason kids are drawn to KIDZ Bop in the first place is that they've heard the less kid-friendly versions of, say, Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" or LMFAO's "Party Rock Anthem" on the radio.
But Chenfeld doesn't think that's why the series has become so popular.
"The songs are performed in a way that sounds a little bit more like the audience," he says. "That's an aspect kids really enjoy. They're hearing other kids do the numbers, and I think that makes the songs a little bit more personal for them so they feel closer to the music."
Although the original artist is not mentioned in the packaging, one might wonder whether a kid who falls in love with Katy Perry songs as featured on a "KIDZ Bop" record might not start pressuring parents for a proper Perry album, which is always far less kid-appropriate.
Chenfeld says it's only natural for kids to want those kinds of records anyway at some point.
"Listen, I don't have any illusions that at some point the kids who are buying KIDZ Bop music move on, to be able to listen to and buy whatever they want to," Chenfeld says. "That's gonna happen. For some kids, that might be 8 or 9 years old. For some kids, that might be 11. It depends on the kid. It depends on the parent. It depends on where they live.
"And, by the way, that's why a lot of artists and writers like being on KIDZ Bop records, because we introduce them to the kids, and then the kids become their fans."
The KIDZ Bop target demo varies, Chenfeld says, noting that kids grow up faster in, say, New York City, than some other places.
"The sweet spot is probably 8 years old," he says. "But we have plenty of kids who are 5, and we have plenty of kids who are 10."
At some point, though, they will age out of it, as will the KIDZ Bop Kids themselves.
"The KIDZ Bop Kids are in the 13- to 14-year-old age group," Chenfeld says. "They're probably slightly older than the KIDZ Bop fans, but they're not so old that they're not accessible to those kids. I think when they cross into the 16-17 range, they're kind of becoming young adults and that's probably a distinguishing line."
Enjoying it now
Charisma Kain is 13. She's been a Kidz Bop Kid since "Kidz Bop 19," which hit the streets in January 2011.
"I used to listen to KIDZ Bop when I was little, all the time," she says. "So I was really excited that I was going to be a KIDZ Bop Kid."
Cain was one of five applicants chosen from a pool of thousands in a nationwide audition process.
She's "superexcited" to be representing KIDZ Bop on its maiden tour, she says. And she's OK with the idea that it won't be long before she's deemed too old to represent the brand.
"Of course," she says. "It's KIDZ Bop. You won't see an 18-year-old KIDZ Bop Kid."
Charisma laughs, then adds, "I'm just gonna enjoy it while it lasts. And KIDZ Bop has been really good for me because it lets me do the three things I love most, which is singing, dancing and performing."
Among the benefits of expanding the brand to a website (which had just under a million-and-a-half unique visitors in July for its biggest month ever), the talent search and now concert tour is that it helps retain the audience that may have moved on to the proper Perry songs by now.
"We've been able to bring in a bunch of kids who might have been done with KIDZ Bop when they moved on from the CDs," Chenfeld says. "But they're very interested in entering KIDZ Star USA, which is our talent contest for kids 15 and younger. They're very interested in being on our website, where the average age of the kids ... is 11 and a half. And they're interested in coming to the tour, where the kids performing are 14 and 15."
Reach the reporter at ed.masley@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4495. Twitter.com/EdMasley.
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