The oddest thing about Kidz Bop is that these defanged versions have a much more perverse bite than their source material. No sounds simultaneously bewilder and rejuvenate more. Now seldom a week goes by that I, 28 and childless, don’t play selections from the Kidz Bop oeuvre, which covers more than 500 contemporary hits over 34 albums. We blasted children’s versions of Rihanna’s “Work” (about a man who wants only sex), Flo Rida’s “Club Can’t Handle Me” (booze-fueled bacchanal) and Pitbull’s “Timber” (sex-fueled bacchanal). Delightful questions abound about how the song’s events could possibly unfold with minors. Clean as the lyrics are, the children still sing - ecstatically squeal, really - from the perspective of a man berating his ex-lover for her newfound independence. The next line, “late night when you need my love,” had been sanitized: “anytime you need to talk.” I wanted to laugh, vomit and cartwheel all at once. It was “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider” meets “Eyes Wide Shut.” It was grotesque, transfixing and supercharged with youth.
It had the same opening line, “You used to call me on my cellphone.” But the rapper had been replaced by a chorus of exuberant, Auto-Tuned, prepubescent children. The track started with the same muffled and drippy R.&B. On Spotify, I typed in “Hotline Bling,” but I accidentally clicked not on Drake’s passive-aggressive ode to his ex but on a cover, by a group called Kidz Bop. To stay alert, we needed something loud and mindless. We drove four hours to my cousin’s wedding, sweated in the August sun and sobered up, and at 10:00 my wife and I began the snaking slog back to Boston from Vermont.
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