Kidz Bop seems unaware of their target demographic
Tidying up adult lyrics often adds hilarity to squeaky-clean ensemble
Kidz Bop is one of pop music’s most inexplicably enduring franchises of the 21st century, beloved by kids and parents for the compilations’ familyfriendly renditions of popular hits, and by everyone else for their unintentional hilarity.
And ever since the Kidz Bop Kids covered Britney Spears’ “Oops! ... I Did It Again” on the very first Kidz Bop release in 2001, the albums have periodically featured songs that, no matter how sanitized their rewritten lyrics may be, still were probably too questionable for a kids’ CD. To celebrate the release of
Kidz Bop 38 on July13 — featuring cleaned-up versions of Drake’s “God’s Plan” and Bruno Mars and Cardi B’s “Finesse” — take a look back at the most amusingly inappropriate pop hits to get the “Kidz Bop” treatment, and the raunchiest lines they edited out.
“Love on the Brain,” Rihanna
Kidz Bop covering Rihanna should be a crime in and of itself, but this song was a particularly questionable choice, with a line like “it beats me black and blue, but it (expletive) me so good” about the singer’s troubled love. Yet, “Love on the Brain” was apparently still fair game for the Kidz Bop Kids, whose edited-in lyric “it makes me feel it’s true, but it tricks me so good” is almost as egregious as their attempts to replicate Rih’s vocals.
“Closer,” The Chainsmokers
Instead of just choosing literal- ly any other song, Kidz Bop rewrote the entire chorus of this Chainsmokers hit to make it family-friendly, giving the song one of the funniest facelifts in the Kidz Bop Kids’ history: “So, baby, pull me closer as we stand against the Rover/ That I know they can’t afford/ Brush that stress right off your shoulder/ Pull the sheets right off the corner of that notebook that you stole/ From your friend’s room back in Boulder/ We ain’t ever getting older.”
“Toxic,” Britney Spears
Again, of all the pop songs Kidz Bop could’ve chosen for this collection, they just shrugged, chose “Toxic” and assigned a bunch of kids to sing the lyric: “With a taste of your lips, I’m on a ride?”
“New Rules,” Dua Lipa
Lipa’s “new rules” for warding off her ex, most of which have to do with avoiding drunken hookups, get a squeaky-clean makeover courtesy of the Kidz Bop Kids, who transform her warning that “you know you’re gonna wake up in his bed in the morning” to the cheerier “you know you’re gonna meet up with your friends in the morning.”
“Lose My Breath,” Destiny’s Child
As much as the Kidz Bop Kids playfully huff and puff in the background of their “Lose My Breath” vocals, that doesn’t change the explicit nature of the bedroom behaviour that Beyoncé, Kelly and Michelle were originally describing, with their version keeping original lyrics like “Need a lifeguard and I need protection/ To put it on me deep in the right direction.”
“That’s What I Like,” Bruno Mars
Under the purview of the Kidz Bop Kids, Mars’ condo in Manhattan is less a carnal kingdom and more like summer camp, with his plans for “sex by the fire at night” transforming into a “hang by the fire at night,” and his “drop it for me” commands turning into “sing it with a friend.”
“I’m the One,” DJ Khaled
“Kidz Bop” nixed Quavo and Chance the Rapper’s contributions to the song, deciding that Lil Wayne’s verse would be the easiest to censor and keeping his “don’t make me catch a body” line but wisely cutting his reference to a companion whom “when she on the molly she a zombie,” replacing it with “when she hear this song she dances crazy.”
“California Gurls,” Katy Perry
Katy Perry is a Kidz Bop staple, but her “California Gurls” wardrobe of “Daisy Dukes, bikinis on top,” was too risqué for the Kidz Bop Kids, and was replaced with the song’s later lyric “fine, fresh, fierce, we got it on lock.” Why Kidz Bop didn’t change the next lyric, about being “so hot, we’ll melt your Popsicle,” is beyond us.
“TiK ToK,” Ke$ha
Obviously, Ke$ha brushing her teeth “with a bottle of Jack” didn’t make it into the Kidz Bop Kids’ “Tik Tok” — instead, when they leave, they “have to pack.” And rather than editing down all the original song’s other problematic references, the Kidz Bop version simply loops the chorus until the end of the song, which is one way to fix things.
“Lips of an Angel,” Hinder
The title really says it all, and yet, Kidz Bop still included Hinder’s growling power ballad, which is less notable for its openly explicit content than its double entendre.
“Paparazzi,” Lady Gaga
The entire song is literally about stalking, but the lyrics are all SFW, as long as you don’t actually listen to what Gaga is saying.