By HANNAH
DZIEZANOWSKI
COLUMNIST
It is the buzz all around campus – the latest Kidz Bop album, Kidz Bop 28, is hot off the press and in high demand! The sound of the weekend is therefore no longer Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk” bursting through thin dorm walls, but a flowery, family-friendly “Uptown Funk” supplementing lively, yet tame, board game parties in dorm lounges and townhouse living rooms. Natural selection is at it again, pushing out all of the top iTunes hits with the superior, censored, Kidz Bop-ified versions of the hits. Let us not forget when the Kidz Bop kids sang “Hey Jude” better than the Beatles ever did…these little virtuosos are steamrollers ready to take over the musical world!
This album, jam-packed with all of the current chart-toppers, skillfully erases all hints of lyrical negativity by replacing emotional and/or inappropriate lyrics with cheery, G-rated substitutes. Such lyrical amendments have turned “liquor” into “water,” “lies” into “eyes,” and “pain” into “rain,” to list a few examples, and frankly, it is shocking that songs with those unpleasant words were popular in the first place. The Kidz Bop kids have generously scrubbed your favorite songs clean and squeezed them into song-sized straightjackets to protect you from even the possibility of an emotional reaction – no one can get hurt in the Kidz Bop zone.
In addition to the appeal of the album’s general purity, some of the tracks are really quite beautiful. Like magic, Sam Smith’s “I’m Not the Only One” is transformed by the children’s voices into a cover wholly devoid of the emotional anguish of the original. This track, like many of the others, is much like a Mickey Mouse-patterned umbrella: it allows you to enjoy the rain and see the rainbow without getting soggy, and reminds you that life will always be better inside that safe, cartoon-like bubble you live inside.
Paired with your Walkman and headphones, this album allows you to bring a non-alcoholic party with you wherever you go, and is guaranteed to boost your mood to its maximum potential. The sheer power and beauty of the edited lyrics is proof that the best way to deal with negative situations or feelings is to cover them up and pretend that they do not exist.