I didn't look too much into this, but is it possible that the increase of censorship isn't just that Kidz Bop is stricter now, but that pop music today has more profanity?
>Kidz Bop is teaching gender role conformity and race identification and pushing kids to grow up quicker, a sociological phenomena known as “kids getting older younger” (KGOY).
This is another weird thing. It's assumed that we're all legally kids until 18 now, and that's being extended with more people attending college and it often being seen as a time to have fun, relax, and enjoy yourself without serious responsibility. Many of our ancestors were working jobs at 13 and some were having kids of their own. Not to say that's the way it should be, but recent trends make it feel like childhood has extended. I personally didn't really feel like an adult until solidly into my mid-20s.
Edit: It seems like "kids" here might be referring to smaller children acting like teenagers. Even in that case, I think little kids playing with toys and games all day is fairly new. Most were doing chores or actual work throughout history.
Really? I looked at the "Identity" section and sure, they just wrote out "lesbian transgender life" from Born This Way, but they also turned "find a man" into "find the one" and do similar things for "woman"... You can say many things about these replacements, but the one I'm not sure about is that the replacement is in the service of making kids get older, younger.
It seems to me just like they just want to make all that into something anodyne, which if anything is the anti-KGOY... unless the alternative is neither Kidz Bop nor the original music, but instead, something more like Raffi? I'm not sure how realistic that is, though.
Reading the study they cite (https://urj.uccs.edu/index.php/urj/article/view/266), it's not that the replacements have an agenda, it's that replacing a few lyrics doesn't really cover up the original intent of a song, and a lot of the songs they cover have non-kid-friendly themes. Another major complaint is the music videos tend to feature kids having fun by dancing around a big house with fancy clothes and expensive stuff, which romanticizes wealth and promotes consumerism. Lyrics romanticizing wealth like "can't you taste this gold" tend not to be censored.
The basic idea is that playing the Kidz Bop version of a Flo Rida song for your kid is similar to showing them the airplane-censored version of Pulp Fiction. If they're too young for the real thing, they're probably too young for the censored version.
Not really. The research seems to be relatively novel, not a watered down version of a different study being repeated by children as your comment would suggest. My point was that the research just wasn't overly prestigious.
>Edit: It seems like "kids" here might be referring to smaller children acting like teenagers. Even in that case, I think little kids playing with toys and games all day is fairly new. Most were doing chores or actual work throughout history.
The KGOY phenomenon tends to refer more to the sexualization (from skimpy wear for girls to glitz magazines for tweens to common widespread use of porn from age 10 and upwards) of children in media, and the effects that may have (if any) on the behaviour of children with regard to how they dress, talk, think, and act. That's what I gather from it, anyway. You can read more about it by searching up the phrase on Google Scholar.
> it possible that [...] pop music today has more profanity?
Given that the chart starts in 2001, after the release of multi-platinum albums like Eminem's Slim Shady LP (1999) and NWA's Straight Outta Compton (1988) I would say that is more a question of boundaries between genres than a coarsening of language in the music 16 year olds are listening to.
> I didn't look too much into this, but is it possible that the increase of censorship isn't just that Kidz Bop is stricter now, but that pop music today has more profanity?
In the quiz, there were two songs featuring the word "champagne". In the older song, it was left intact, in the newer it was censored.
> It's assumed that we're all legally kids until 18 now
Not really. There is more nuisances when it comes to the law. e.g. In many places you cannot drink until you are 21, in other the age of being able to consent to sex is lower than that. Under eighteen can even be judged as adults in some extreme cases. Out of Hollywood movies things are not so clear cut.
> Many of our ancestors were working jobs at 13 and some were having kids of their own.
And you can find many examples of kids being traded as slaves or for sex work. I think that the purpose of society regulating how we tread minors is to not replicate past customs but to improve the well being of newer generations. The past was a world of scarcity and lack of knowledge, in the present we know better.
> often being seen as a time to have fun, relax, and enjoy yourself without serious responsibility
Some of the XXI century most tough decision are taken by teenagers as they decide what to study or not and shape their professional future. I hardly see how the self sacrifice and high level of discipline required to study are easier than a low skilled job. Children spending so much time studying instead of earning money is an investment in their future and our future far away from enjoy themselves.
> Kidz Bop is teaching gender role conformity and race identification
To break the cycle of inequality inherited from a past of segregation and xenophobia kids need to be able to learn with open possibilities about their own future.
We can do better than previous generations, and I think that we owe that to future ones.
> Under eighteen can even be judged as adults in some extreme cases
Not "extreme cases" but "certain crimes" and in Oregon's case, certain crimes include Second degree assault, or a fist fight that results in a broken nose.
> Some of the XXI century most tough decision are taken by teenagers as they decide what to study or not and shape their professional future. I hardly see how the self sacrifice and high level of discipline required to study are easier than a low skilled job. Children spending so much time studying instead of earning money is an investment in their future and our future far away from enjoy themselves.
At least in the US I would say a minority of teenagers take that approach to their academic/career decisions.
> Most were doing chores or actual work throughout history.
I have to disagree, the young of other social animals like dogs and lions all spend most of their time "playing". This, combined with the fact that a human child is comparatively underdeveloped compared to the young of every other animal makes it hard to conceive of any useful task a child could do in a neolithic society. It's not like toys are some recent invention, they're one of the oldest types of artefact we dig up. I believe "chores" are a modern invention that exists mostly to act as busywork. Washing dishes doesn't teach you anything important but many types of play exist as a sort of simulation of adult life.
What? Chores are things that need to get done by the family. Someone needs to feed the dog, someone needs to clean the dishes, someone needs to take out the compost. Kids can participate in this stuff from a very young age, and doing chores together is full of moments to teach and play.
For example my daughter would help fold towels at age 4, and we'd sing a song about a butterfly folding its wings. It is a complex motion for a young body, involving many movements that cross the body. It was a chance to sing a song together and invent new verses together. It was a chance to bond as a parent, and to set the example that we all contribute to the family.
Fast forward a few years and she's interested in other chores, from laundry to dishes to cooking to caring for the pets. It's just a baseline expectation that we all contribute in the ways we can.
It's patently absurd to suggest chores are simply busywork. There's plenty of opportunities for play, creativity, socialization, education, and neurological development in doing chores.
I honestly would argue that it doesn’t. And mind you, this comes from someone who handwashes the dishes almost every night, regardless of whether my sink has just 1 or 10 plates, and whose only ever roommate conflict happened because the roommate was always procrastinating on doing his dishes.
I absolutely hated doing dishes and chores when i lived with parents, as well as other “teenage chores” like mowing lawn and such. My parents wanted me to do it not because they needed my help, but because it was a “teachable moment” (which they expressed in very clear terms). It especially ticked me off, because i would use maybe a single plate in a day back then, while the rest of my family would add like 6-8 plates on top of it + tons of other stuff like pots and pans and such. I got very annoyed by it very quickly, so i managed to convince my parents to let me not do dishes as often, as long as i spent all that time studying instead (on top of a lot of studying i was doing in the first place). It was far from an easy negotiation, took me months of time and lots of heated arguments to get to that flimsy compromise.
Now that i live on my own, doing dishes feels like a meditative sort of mindless thing to do at the end of the day (kinda like playing minecraft as something busy to do while listening to a podcast episode), except it also helps keeping my place clean and orderly. And i legitimately enjoy doing it well, paying close attention to every plate, etc. I dont even ever use my dishwasher for any purpose other than a drying rack for dishes I hand wash.
What i personally learned from this, it is less about the task itself and more about the purpose (and control). My parents would want me to do dishes at a specific time (often enough interrupting what i am doing) and just for the purpose of a “teachable moment”. I absolutely dreaded doing it.
These days, i do dishes every night, but on my own schedule, out of my own volition, and for the sole purpose of maintaining order at my place of living. It feels more like a relaxing task to do than a chore.
I had horrible parents that were not super loving to me, but I remember a moment where my dad explained why the soap bubbles increased when using hot water. I miss you dad.
Regarding the actual music, I actually love it. I was exposed to KidZ Bop as a parent with little kids ten years ago, and now I can torture them as teenagers BWAHAHAHA
As a technical style, consider how this is produced: Record every take many many different performances, then splice together the best in very short bits, usually one phrase at a time. Wouldn't be viable before , but perhaps easy enough now.
We take digital non-linear editing for granted now, but kids I dare you to try this on a Tascam 4-Track...
Very cool site/presentation of a mildly amusing and thought provoking topic. The quiz was just the right length to leave me wanting more rather than bouncing. And it all works great on mobile.
When browsers give up control to web pages, we can't be surprised when a website's poor design decisions affect the browsing experience itself. (and not just the look of a page)
There's almost zero-reason for a record label or artist to turn down a kids bop cover if Kids Bop thinks they can rewrite it to work for their exclusive audience.
I mean, of course many artists would allow it, but it should be obvious that many wouldn't consider it for a second.
You do realize there was a time when artists wouldn't allow their music to be used in commercials, and this kind of thing, right? Completely distorting a bit of art for the 'target demographic' is usually way out of most artists' area of interest.
Interesting, but quite unusable on iPhone SE :( It’d be nice if they nice if they explained why certain things were censored as well; I couldn’t figure out some of them. I wonder how Kidz Bop comes up with their replacements…
>Kidz Bop is teaching gender role conformity and race identification and pushing kids to grow up quicker, a sociological phenomena known as “kids getting older younger” (KGOY).
This is another weird thing. It's assumed that we're all legally kids until 18 now, and that's being extended with more people attending college and it often being seen as a time to have fun, relax, and enjoy yourself without serious responsibility. Many of our ancestors were working jobs at 13 and some were having kids of their own. Not to say that's the way it should be, but recent trends make it feel like childhood has extended. I personally didn't really feel like an adult until solidly into my mid-20s.
Edit: It seems like "kids" here might be referring to smaller children acting like teenagers. Even in that case, I think little kids playing with toys and games all day is fairly new. Most were doing chores or actual work throughout history.