It's OK To Hate Your Kids' Music

First of all, big ups to Amy, Stefan and the assorted critics, DJ's, musicians and kid media connoisseurs who made this poll possible. I for one am pleased beyond reason that we now have an authoritative, peer-reviewed scorecard for quality kids' music, a genre that's for too long been either neglected or exploited. Long live Fids and Kamily…

It couldn't come at a better time, obviously. As a father of three who devotes the same sort of obsessive energy to making kiddie music CDs that I once devoted to scouring record shops for 12-inch singles by pale Englishmen with funny haircuts, I'm psyched by the sudden onslaught of new kids' music. It's all good: the carpetbagging of "adult" acts like Paul Westerberg and Medeski Martin & Wood, the awesomeness of radio shows Greasy Kid Stuff and Spare the Rock, the break-out successes of Berkner and Ralph and They Might Be Giants, the arrival of the indie kid rock label Little Monster... Music-loving parents suddenly have lots to celebrate, an abundance of proof that we've reached a cultural milestone of sorts, a time when becoming a mom or dad no longer means enduring an onslaught of cynical, superficial, crappy music.

So crank it up and pass the bongos and hip hip horray and all that.

But forgive me if I add a note of cynicism to the happy polka-dot party. Am I alone in noticing how much of what now passes for kids' music isn't really, you know, kids' music? How so much of new kids' music is either ho-hum, jangly adult contemporary that happens to focus on the importance or sharing or jungle gyms (read: Jack Johnson's "Curious George" soundtrack) or simplified folk- or psych-rock that seems designed more to make parents feel cool than entertain actual kids?

This was driven home last week at a Sippy Cups show at the House of Blues in LA, where I spent two hours elbowing a horde of other sweaty parents to ensure our dumbstruck offspring had a good vantage point to see the light show. Then there was the Dan Zanes concert at UCLA, where I heard the following actual snippet of dialogue: "Stop squirming, Montana! Listen! It's a sea shanty! Can you say that: sea shanty?"

Montana couldn't care less, and no wonder. Dan Zanes is a great folk traditionalist with a firm grasp of his musical roots, just as the Sippy Cups are an ingenious blend of Captain Beefheart and the Wiggles… and none of that matters a whit to real-life actual kids. They want to rock and laugh and dance and hear some echo of their own anarchic, wondrous world. And as eager as we pop snob parents are to pass our discerning tastes on to our children, we mustn't forget this: it's the kids, stupid.

That doesn't mean kids' music should be saccharine or sentimental or simple – quite the opposite. It should be strange and forceful and every once in a while, entirely off-putting (Try digging up some Jim Copp or Fatcat & Fishface). Sometimes we parents should hate it. When we do, we'll know we're really doing our job.

Christopher Noxon is the author of Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes and the Reinvention of the American Grown-Up. Excerpts, interviews and a blog are posted on the Rejuvenile website, and an archive of previous writings is available on christophernoxon.com.