KIDZ BOP 2022

“KIDZ BOP 2022” brings fresh tunes and faces with the same old baggage of censorship.

By: Jun Lin

After seeing “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” by Lil Nas X as the third track on “KIDZ BOP 2022,” I suspected the album was going to be a long two hours and nineteen minutes. The Lil Nas X anthem is both the most interesting and most inappropriate adaptation in forty-eight songs. Placed at the beginning of the album, the hard-hitting opening dulls the rest of the child-friendly tunes. 

KIDZ BOP caters to kids and parents by creating censored versions of top pop songs, and I consider censoring a song about self-acceptance and un-censorship an unfortunate choice. Replacing “bad” words is one thing, but replacing a song’s entire meaning is another. “Peaches” by Justin Bieber is another off-color song choice due to its strong marketing and lyrical association with marijuana, which KIDZ BOP erases.

Besides questionable music selections, a common phenomenon for KIDZ BOP, there is the tinny production and unflattering vocal processing that make the album difficult to listen to in long sittings. Each new track is like spinning a wheel and wondering whether or not it will retain enough of what makes the song a hit in the first place.

However, the multilingual, international song choices, such as “Butter,” “Todo de Ti,” and “Die Guten Zeiten,” acknowledges global audiences, and I can easily see it expanding the musical palate of first-time listeners.

While “KIDZ BOP 2022” is a lot of the same old KIDZ BOP that has managed to top children’s music charts and sales, its strange existence in relation to content censorship continues to fascinate, and the varied assortment of songs from around the world is a nice nod to the rising popularity of international music.