The Best of Kids Podcasts from May 2017

As we begin to wrap up June 2017, it's time to take a look back at some of the very best episodes from the kids podcast world in May 2017.

Now, if you want to get the background on how I'm using the RadioPublic iOS app to publish these lists, feel free to go back and read my list of the best of kids podcasts from March 2017. (Or if you want to hear what you missed last month, here's the best of kids podcasts from April 2017.) But otherwise, just know that you can listen to these specific episodes from the RadioPublic app or right here by using the widget below.

There were way more episodes I considered or listened to than the (admittedly arbitrary) ten-episode limit I'm imposing on myself. So while this is maybe a sampler as much as the "best," strictly speaking, I won't steer you wrong, I promise. With that, let's begin with the list from May 2017! (Use this link to listen from the RadioPublic website.)

[P.S. I don't know why the Brains On elevator piece is still showing up, and why the Ear Snacks and Past and the Curious pieces aren't in the full playlist, but individual links show up below...]

[P.P.S. If you've stumbled upon this list more than a month after I've posted it, the overall list has probably been updated, but you can stream each episode below.]

(In no particular order)

Sparkle Stories: "Cats New Home" [Another good introduction to a well-loved series of tales from Sparkle Stories.]

But Why: "Why Are Some Animals Pets and Others Are Lunch?" [I think this is an excellent discussion of ethics of pet ownership, a good match for a Short and Curly episode on a similar topic.]

Story Pirates: "Ep. 51: Eat a Spider Day" [I loved this.]

What If World: "Ep. 32 - What If Sharks Had Legs?" [Star Wars and bad puns. You've heard of dad jokes and dad rock? This is dad podcast.]

Story Time: "A Longish Tale written by Michael Ryan" [A shaggy dog story, except it features a long-tailed marmoset.]

Good Stuff Kids: "Episode #70 - Frances England" [Always happy to hear kids musicians talk about their work on this podcast.]

Hello, World!

Jamie Johnson Football Podcast: "Episode 9: Jurgen Klopp, Georgia Stanway & Nikita Parris" [I'm more of a Bundesliga guy, but this great for the Premier League fan in your house.]

Wow in the World: "Corn Your Toes and Blast-Off To The Moon!" [Yay for NPR, Mindy Thomas, and Guy Rax. 75% science, 25% silly.]

Ear Snacks: "Extra: Facts! (Steven Drozd)" [Not one but two musician interviews in this playlist. This one with Steven Drozd is pretty silly.]

The Past and the Curious: "On The Move: Nelly Bly, Henry Box Brown, All Around this World" [Listen to this episode then listen to the Deedle Deedle Dees songs about the people, too!]

The (Mostly) Compleat Foreverywhere (plus Steve Burns Interview!)

We're big fans of StevenSteven's Foreverywhere around these parts, so because lead Steven Steve Burns recently answered a handful of questions about the album, I thought it'd be worth the time to put together the set of videos Burns and co-Steven Steven Drozd put together for the album alongside Burns' responses.

It's just such a fun album, y'all, including the 3-song arc across the entire album telling the story of a princess and a very persistent unicorn. You can read my review of the album (linked above) for some background on the long and winding road the duo's taken to get to this point, but at this point, enjoy the interview and the music and visuals.

Zooglobble: What was the final push or change that let this long-germinating album out into the world?

Steve Burns: We finally just said "let's do it ourselves". It seemed like such a shame to let it fester indefinitely in the ether...and I figured it made sense with the 20th anniversary of Blue's Clues.

StevenSteven - "A Fact Is a Gift That You Give Your Brain [YouTube] [Note: I love this song and video so much.]

What was your motivation behind writing the three Unicorn / Princess Rainbow songs? Did you want to tell that story and find you just couldn’t fit it into one song? Did you want to write some songs that could fit over the arc of an album?

I really want to do something that told a story, sort of like Puff the Magic Dragon or Ziggy Stardust or Harry Nillson's "The Point". I've always loved narrative music- it's something The Flaming Lips do so well for example. We also want to take deliberately established kids entertainment "cliches" like rainbow and unicorns and sort of give them an unexpected rock and roll upgrage...if that makes sense. Also for the record, we've been doing the whole unicorn thing since about 2008, Starbucks.

StevenSteven - "The Unicorn and Princess Rainbow" [YouTube]

The album features some very “serious” songs and some very silly ones -- how did you think about how to fit them together on the album, and whether or not they’d fit together at all?

I think if there's a thread that runs through the songs, it's about never giving up. From The Lonely Unicorn, to the song about bullying, to the one about the toilet bowl, there's a strong theme of determination and courage on the album. At least I hope there is!!!

StevenSteven - "OK Toilet Bowl" [YouTube]

Photo credit: Jeremy Slutskin

Video: "OK Toilet Bowl" - StevenSteven

I am Team Kids Music Is Generally Better When It's Not Educational.

But I am also Team StevenSteven.

So, when presented with "OK Toilet Bowl," from the duo's fine debut album Foreverywhere, I am conflicted. On the one hand, it's a song encouraging kids to poop in the toilet -- there's little in terms of subject matter that could be more "educational for kids."

On the other hand... it's just such an awesome song. And when the video features a cheesy '70s-style game show lyric video to go along with the cheesy vibe of the song, Steve Burns in a 'fro out to here, and its own dance move to rival the Macarena, I guess I'm sunk. Team StevenSteven all the way, I guess.

StevenSteven - "OK Toilet Bowl" [YouTube]

Rainbows and Unicorns and Kids Music (Foreverywhere - StevenSteven)

If teaching kids how to be patient -- how to defer gratification until later -- is a useful skill, then the release of Foreverywhere, the debut album from StevenSteven, may be the world's most important parental tool.

Perhaps you think I'm kidding that an album about rainbows and unicorns is the most anticipated album in kids music history? Let me put it this way -- I made a joke about how kindie fans had waited so long for the album that it had become the Chinese Democracy of kids music.

Twice. I'd forgotten that I'd made the joke already.

But here we are, February 24, 2017 -- more than a decade since former Blue's Clues star Steve Burns and Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd first unleashed upon kids music the world's most awesome tribute to Groundhog Day -- and, yes, Foreverywhere is out in the world and the result is rainbows and unicorns, and in particular, a guitar-shredding Princess Rainbow and a Lonely Unicorn who joins her band, falls in love, loses her, then searches literally the entire universe to find her again.

Honestly, the whole album feels a little bit like that sentence -- epic, heartfelt, and a little rambling at points. (Also, it's meticulously crafted, which is probably more than I can say about the sentence.)

After several listens, I came to think of the album as three EPs smooshed together. There's the science-y, "fact"-based set of songs in the first half -- the fuzzy psych-rock of "Mimic Octopus," the game-show-turned-pop-song "OK Toilet Bowl," and the song guaranteed to put a smile on my face every time I listen to it, "A Fact Is A Gift That You Give Your Brain" -- those are the tracks that will make power-pop fans of any age move their heads to the rhythm. Then there's the goofier and sometimes downright odd takes on kids music tropes in the second half -- "If You're Ginormous And You Know It" features one giant drummer, while "The Happy Then Sad Then Triumphant Spider" takes more than six minutes to tell the tale of one spider, one rain spout, and one sun. (It's like those chorales that take their lyrical inspiration from about 3 lines of Biblical verse.)

And the third set is the epic story of the Lonely Unicorn and his search for Princess Rainbow, which stretches across 3 songs spread through the entire album. If you think six minutes is too long of a song for your favorite 4-year-old, wait 'til you play them the nearly 11-minute closing title track. And I suppose that's where some parents will think, "AWESOME!" and other parents will say, "ARE YOU NUTS?" Personally I am sympathetic to the latter group -- I'm not sure how many younger kids will retain their attention on those longer, somewhat sleepier tracks -- but am pleased that the duo just went for it. (Skip the tracks, go back to "A Fact," if you need the shorter blast.)

You may hear lots of kids music this year, and you may even hear kids music this year you like more than Foreverywhere, but I'm pretty sure you're not going to hear anything like it in kids music this year. There is no small amount of rainbows and unicorns in this album ready to be unleashed upon the world, and, yeah, it was worth the wait. Definitely recommended.

Note: I received a copy of this album for possible review.

Songs for Groundhog Day

Exactly a decade ago, I published a list of songs for Groundhog Day. "List" is a little overstating things -- it was exactly three songs long.

But now I've expanded the list by more than 100%! It's now seven songs long. [Ed.: With a few suggestions below and on social media, we're up to double-digits!] Which, to be frank, is probably reasonable for the relatively minor holiday that is Groundhog Day. But there's some good stuff here. Unfortunately my very favorite groundhog-themed song, "I Hog the Ground," isn't available on Spotify, but the other six tracks are.

If you've got further suggestions, let me know in the comments. But do it quick before Punxsutawney Phil is called upon!

"I Hog the Ground (Groundhog Song)" - Steve Burns / Steven Drozd (watch here)

"Oh Groundhog" - Lisa Loeb and Elizabeth Mitchell

"Groundhog" - Red Yarn

"Shadow" - Joanie Leeds and the Nightlights

"The Groundhog Song (How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck?)" - Daria

"How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck?" - Danny Adlerman and Friends

"Groundhog" - Sam Hinton

"A Shadow" - Gustafer Yellowgold

"The Groundhog's Lament" - Mr. Richard and the Pound Hounds

"Groundhog Day" - John McCutcheon

"Staten Island Chuck" - The Rock-A-Silly Band

StevenSteven: Finally and Foreverywhere

It started nearly a decade ago, when former Blue's Clues star Steve Burns and current Flaming Lips instrumentalist Steven Drozd stormed Jack's Big Music Show with "I Hog (the Ground)," which forever and for all time will be the best song for Groundhog Day.

Then, a couple years or so later, news surfaced that Burns and Drozd hadn't stopped singing about groundhogs but had, in fact, recorded an entire album together. They named their band Steve 'n' Steven. (Yes, that post links to a Myspace page, which is an indication of just how far back this goes.)

And then: silence.

You can read this 2014 post about the first time the album was streamed, and you can hear the frustration in my text -- about time! -- and palpable excitement. (Especially since that was in the wake of a video that has become over time one of my all-time favorites -- "A Fact Is a Gift That You Give Your Brain.")

And then (again): silence (again).

Until the end of this September, when a brand new StevenSteven website and Twitter account popped up, with a psychedelic new video for "The Unicorn and Princess Rainbow" playing on the site.

Well, even Chinese Democracy finally got a release date, and the long-awaited StevenSteven (spelling updated slightly) album -- now titled Foreverywhere -- has an official release date: February 2017.

The band cites "Black Sabbath, Cephalopods, Grover, [and] Toy Commercials from the 1970s" among many other people and entities as influences and inspirations. It'll definitely be one of those kids music albums that lots of folks both inside and outside the kids music world will be talking about next year.

As for me, I might be willing to be like the Unicorn in the 3 song "mini-EP" of sorts scattered as an arc throughout the entire album, waiting until the edge for forever to have the album released into the world. (I have been like that, in kindie terms, at least.) But I'm glad I've only got another 3 months or so.