Why Read Music Reviews?

I started this website in part because when I was a new parent looking for music to listen to with an infant Miss Mary Mack, all I could find were 50-word blurbs (not much more than a couple tweets, long before "tweets" were a thing). They almost uniformly said that the albums were great. I had no idea what they sounded like, and I didn't trust those reviews At All.

It was the turn of the century, and while I suppose I could have used Napster or other file streaming sites, I was never much of a person for illegality, and besides, it's unlikely there would have been much kids music on there. Even more importantly, even if I had found kids music on there, I would have had no direction to find out what I should start out with.

So when I started writing reviews at the request of my wife, filling out a page or two of her parenting group newsletter, I was conscious of filling a need, not through blisteringly funny or devastating or inventive narrative, but through simple information -- who did the artist sound like (often meaning an "adult" artist), what was the best age range, even where somebody could purchase the albums, which was not so easy to find fifteen years ago. (Thankfully, that last point is something I've dropped over time in my reviews.)

I gradually copied those interviews over to this website when I started it in 2004, and I suppose if I had stuck with just reviews, I might have tired of the website fairly soon. But a little website called "YouTube" got its start in 2005, and gradually over time it became easy to embed videos, and then songs and albums into website posts. What could easily have become a website filled with nothing but words about music became something that mixed those words with the music and images featuring that music.

And people responded. Not in throwing fistfuls-of-money-at-me ways, but parents and artists responded with words of thanks and requests for advice. I knew I had an audience and figured I was having some sort of impact -- it seemed like there were others that were looking for the same I had been looking for a few years earlier. I never wrote for the adulation or attention, but it was useful to know that my desire to find a somewhat more fully-rounded approach for music for kids and families -- kids music worth sharing, to coin a phrase -- was not some crazy approach that I, and I alone, sought.

I wrote a review about Red Yarn's newest album Born in the Deep Woods last week. It's an excellent album, and I had a lot of fun writing the review. Really, how often do you get to make a "More cowbell!" reference that makes 100% sense in the context of, well, just about anything you write?

But writing that review helped me see in even starker contrast how writing a review has been a comparatively rare event for me over the past 6-12 months. For someone who's written reviews of maybe 750 albums, of maybe 50 albums a year or more, to slow down to maybe a dozen over the past eight months or so is a pretty big reduction, and I've been spending a lot of time thinking about why I've slowed down.

Some of it, to be sure, is just capital-L Life. Kids get older, you get older, and the amount of time and energy it takes to put family and personal responsibilities front and center increases (or, at least, it has for me).

But some of it is also recognizing that the impact of any one particular review is not what it once was. That's a result of many factors, including how social media seems to drive a lot of discovery these days. Eight or nine years ago, a good "feed reader" took care of notifying the devoted audience, with Google and other search engines informing the rest. These days, social media coordinator is a job, and one that I'm not willing to fill (nor do my family and personal responsibilities let me) more than on a cursory level, letting my audience know there's a new piece available, and maybe a (comparatively small) percentage will see the link.

Also, did I mention roughly 750 reviews? That's a lot of words, and there is no small amount of effort that goes into making sure I'm not repeating myself, and trying not to bore myself.

Sometimes I don't always succeed in not boring myself, and if I'm boring myself, then I'm probably boring the reader, too. That's one of the things, I think, that struck me about that Red Yarn review -- it was fun to write and craft in a way a lot of my reviews recently haven't been. And while I probably can't expect to write a Snail Song & Magic Toast review or a review of a Recess Monkey album done entirely in limerick form every time, I probably need to figure out how to improve my batting average, as it were.

I've got maybe a couple dozen albums that have been released over the last 8-12 months that I want to write some sort of review on, and my goal is write those reviews in the rest of March and April. After that, however, I think I need to take a break with reviews as I currently conceive of them. It doesn't mean that I want to stop writing about kids music, but I'm not sure that the review model works anymore, or at least works for me anymore. I need to figure out a different way to write about kids music (and kids podcasts) that interests me and interests readers, and going back to the days of 50-word blurbs 15 years ago is not the answer (for me anyway).

So for those of you who read the title of this post and thought that I'd posit an answer to that question, hopefully by now you've figured out that this is not that post. Rather, I'm asking you to answer that question for yourself -- and share that with me. What do you get out of album reviews? Anything? Do you ever read them? That question can apply to this website, but I'm interested more broadly -- what do record reviews do for you? Do they help at all in the world of kids music? How about more broadly than that -- any form of entertainment, for any age? What convinces you to take a chance on an album, a movie, a book, a podcast, a play -- you get the idea? Is it because somebody wrote an album review so eloquently that you couldn't wait to listen? Or did your friend whose musical tastes you trust say, "You have to listen to this?" Or did Spotify's all-knowing brain figure out exactly what you'd geek out over.

Sorry for getting all meta in this post, it's not something I typically like to do. And to be clear, I am most definitely not looking for praise or attention with this. I'm doing this because I think the creation of music and audio (and culture generally) specifically for children is something worthy of more praise than any form of kid culture (save for books) gets, but I think the way I've been doing this for about 15 years is no longer particularly effective. That could be the result of my own limitations as a writer and site administrator, but regardless it's time to figure out a new approach, and I'd like your help. Thanks in advance.

59th Grammy Award Nominations for Best Children's Album

... or, as I call it, the final victory of kindie.

Last month, the nominations for the 59th Annual Grammy Awards were announced, and while I continue to be less than completely convinced of the value of Grammy awards for kids music, there's no doubt that the awards are still considered a Big Deal throughout the recorded music industry, kids' musicians included.

First, let's list the five nominees in the category of Best Children's Album:

Explorer of the World

Frances England

Frances England Music

Infinity Plus One

Secret Agent 23 Skidoo

Underground Records

Novelties

Recess Monkey

Press Play

Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could

Bumblin' Bee Records

Saddle Up

The Okee Dokee Brothers

Okee Dokee Music

The Grammy Awards will be announced on Sunday, February 12 -- the biggest awards in the evening, the rest of the awards (including this category) that afternoon. And unlike most of the nominees, the kids' nominees take the opportunity to play a benefit concert the Saturday the day before the concert. This year, the concert is on Saturday the 11th, and if you've got kids and live in Los Angeles, it's worth checking out getting tickets. (You can read more about the history here.) I went to last year's concert, and, yeah, it's a good time -- the public is unlikely to get to hear these five artists play together.

The annual Grammy weekend has also become the closest West Coast analogue to KindieFest/Kindiecomm, thanks to an annual industry-only luncheon also held on Saturday the day before the awards ceremonies. This year is no exception (details here), and for those musicians who haven't had a chance to attend either the Grammy-related luncheon or the East Coast gatherings, it's definitely worth considering whether a day or two in the L.A. area might be within your budget.

I've been writing this site for more than 12 years, and when I started, the word "kindie" hadn't even been coined. Yes, artists like Dan Zanes, Laurie Berkner, and Justin Roberts had released multiple albums, and of course artists like Trout Fishing in America, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer and Raffi were walking along the paths Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, and others had created.

When I researched the Grammy nominations for the kids music awards (non-spoken word) handed out in February 2004 and February 2005, bookending the start of this site, I was a little surprised to see that it wasn't a collection of Disney retreads -- both years are pretty solid collections of albums from artists familiar to this site.

But I think it's fair to say that those lists come more from a folk-music tradition with some gentle pop thrown in. I think that the Dan Zanes nod in 2005 is the only album that could safely plant both feet in the "kindie" tradition as it's been most popularly understood -- pulling in rock and other musical traditions beyond folk and pop, and not dependent upon music labels for funding and distribution.

This list, on the other hand, while pulling in elements of folk music and pop, feels like its heart comes from indie rock and some hip-hop. At this point Brady Rymer (nominated for multiple Grammys) and the Okee Dokee Brothers (winners and nominated multiple times) seem like Grammy royalty, and only Rymer had released an album before 2005.

And unlike lists of recent years, on which Rymer, the Okee Dokee Brothers, and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo had previously appeared, there was no "exception" this year. No non-kids artist making an album for kids, no spoken-word recitation of a book, no... nothing. Just five artists all easily described as kindie stars, with roughly 35 albums for kids between them. I don't want to say it's the perfect "kindie" list, because that implies a qualitative hierarchical distinction that I'm not trying to make. But I'm not sure I could come up with a list that is... more kindie (as it's currently defined in terminology and example) than this one.

I don't want to say "my work here is done," but I think it's fair to say that one of my goals when I started this site more than a dozen years ago -- raising the visibility of great kids music that drew upon a broad range of musical styles -- has been accomplished. I'm not taking credit for any of it -- that belongs to the artists themselves -- but I think it's time for me to think (again) about how to further expand the visibility of kids audio to an even wider audience, and to think (much more) about how to further expand who creates kids audio to an even wider creator base. Because the two are related, and the two are how when we talk about kids music a dozen years from now, somebody will talk about a Grammy list that builds upon the paths the Okee Dokee Brothers and Secret Agent 23 Skidoo further blazed, but doesn't include them, either.

Best Kids Music of 2015: A Summary

I can now relax heading into the Christmas holidays because I wrapped up my reviews of the best -- or at least my favorites -- of the year in kids music. Here, before I forget, are my three lists:

Before I sign off for the year -- and this site is going to be pretty quiet until the new year -- a couple brief thoughts to ponder in 2016.

I think there was a lot of great music this year -- really, just go back and check out those lists of top albums and songs -- but I felt like the number of new musicians I was introduced to this year was diminished a bit from previous years. I noted last year that the number of artists represented in my lists was maybe 20% of all the artists I was exposed to. So I recognize that this dimming of new music tickling my eardrums could be my own narrowing of tastes. But I'm also a little worried that I couldn't find ten debuts I wanted to highlight this year -- it wasn't even like I had 8 or 9 and could've tweaked my guidelines to get to 10 -- at best there was maybe one more that was anywhere near being in the running. So, again, I don't know if that's me or the genre generally, but that's not something I recall thinking in previous years.

The other "big thought" I have from the year is that I think the economics of the genre is at a tipping point... but I'm not sure which way it's going to tip. Artists keep reporting that album sales (both digital and physical) continue to decline. Not for all artists, and to vary degrees to be sure, but it seems like the model of having album sales be the primary income stream is nearing an end for the kids music world much sooner than I thought it would. At the same time, artists are diversifying their artistic efforts (books, puppet shows, videos). And with the explosion of streaming services trying to provide "walled gardens" for kids-related media, there could be an explosion of opportunities for talented kids musicians to be snapped up for exclusive albums, videos, and more for those services. (Exhibit A: The Pop Ups.)

If I had to guess, I'd think that this is a great opportunity for focused kids' artists with a wealth of songs, creative ideas, and creative people in their address books... and not so good news for "hobbyist" musicians who can't devote a significant amount of resources (mostly time, but even money) in producing high-quality music, videos, and concert experiences.

Will the explosion in places to have music heard result in an ever-increasing flowering of types of kids music... or its homogenization? I'm not sure, but I'm thinking 2016 might be a really important year.

Mixtapes For My Father

I did not fall into reviewing music for kids because of any deep childhood immersion into the genre. When I was young, my own musical memories are that of Mantovani, Herb Alpert, and other bandleaders you could hear on "Easy Listening" radio stations.

Not only did my parents predate the Baby Boom generation, neither of them came to the United States until adulthood, and so American (and British) rock and roll, rhythm and blues, jazz weren't part of their musical DNA. "Light music" wasn't performed and recorded with kids in mind, but as many of the songs lacked vocals and certainly were not harsh in any way, they were perfectly safe for listening with kids, and so I remember tooling around Northern California on weekend drives with my parents, listening to one perfectly orchestrated, slightly swinging tune after another. All those classic kids' albums from the '60s and '70s -- your Peter, Paul, and Mommy, your The Point!, anything from Pete Seeger or Ella Jenkins -- I never heard them until years after I became a parent, or thirty, forty, or even fifty years after they were released.

And so while music was never hidden our house -- and, indeed, I took all sorts of lessons, from piano to violin to organ -- it was never anything that my parents looked to specifically share with me. And although I have fond memories of listening to that "light music," I don't revisit it today and doubt I would listen to it for any reason other than nostalgia.

Here seems an appropriate time to mention two new attempts -- from completely different parts of the musical spectrum -- to craft a listening experience to be shared by parent and child. Neither of these attempts includes anything from Mantovani, though one is slightly Mantovani-adjacent, despite its relative newness.

This Record Belongs To... record and record player

Let's start, then, with that slightly retro attempt from Light In The Attic Records. It's called This Record Belongs To ________, and it's received press attention well beyond any release the kids music world typically receives. I suspect that much of the attention has to do with the format of the release -- Light In The Attic issued the record on vinyl and partnered with Jack White's Third Man Records to package the album with a miniature record player. As high-concept ideas go, This Record Belongs To, is a pretty good one -- deliberately push back against the digital tide that's swept the musical world, even the kids' bay I thought would be sheltered for longer than it has been.

I can't comment on the record player or the vinyl record -- hey, what can I say, while I love CDs, I've never had much interest in collecting vinyl. But the album itself (also available on mp3 if necessary) is essentially a mixtape of classic kid-friendly tracks from the 1960s and 1970s -- Carole King's "One Was Johnny," a couple Harry Nilsson tracks including "Me and My Arrow," the Pointer Sisters' "Pinball Number Count" permanently imprinted upon the brain of countless American youth who've seen more than a handful of Sesame Street episodes. And there are a number of tracks that weren't created with kids in mind -- Vashti Bunyan's "Diamond Day" and Donovan's "The Mandolin Man and His Secret." As mixtapes go, this one is excellent.

Now, to the credit of the person who created it, DJ Zach Cowie, hasn't tried to suggest anything like that he's trying to bring "real" music to kids. (Would that some of the coverage of the album had been as modest in suggesting how much better this selection is.) Which is a good thing, because leaving aside the issue of the general quality of kids music these days (memo: it's good, better than it's ever been), the idea of mixing "kids music" with kid-friendly music for all has been used for years by DJs like those at Greasy Kid Stuff and Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child, to name a couple. All I'm suggesting is that, as good as this particular set of tracks is -- it's good, really it is -- it's by no means unique, and it's very much possible to create a similar album with tracks that were recorded in the past quarter-century.

Approaching kids music from the other end of the spectrum is Smiles Ahead, the first release from Kansas City-based Mighty Mo Productions, a label whose specific goal is to raise the visibility of the current crop of musicians making music for kids and families. This album is a collection of "happy" songs (their next collection, scheduled for release on Valentine's Day, will have more of a love theme), a theme that is pretty flexible and, in a genre that is as generally positive as kids' music, open to a wide variety of tracks. Particular standouts include Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could's "Jump Up," The Pop Ups' soaring "Box of Crayons," and one of the new tracks, the Verve Pipe's "Get Happy!."

It is not necessarily a mixtape, and unlike the This Record Belongs To _______ and the radio shows I mention above, there's no attempt to mix current "non-kids" music (or older music of any sort). In a genre that, despite recent attempts, by artists to stitch together a concept of "kids music" as a national thing, is still fairly atomized, Mighty Mo is staking its business model in part on the idea that if a family on the West Coast likes Caspar Babypants (aka Chris Ballew), then they might also like Minnesota's Okee Dokee Brothers. They're hoping that listening to music in the minivan will lead to jamming to music together in concert. They're also wanting to make their business dependent on "kids music that parents will like too." That is definitely not their tagline, but it's a tagline I've heard literally hundreds of times in my 15 or so years of covering this genre. The fact that the tagline (or its variants) still gets thrown around is an indication that the genre's got a long ways to go.

I don't know whether Mighty Mo's business model will work any better than Light In The Attic's will (though I'm guessing Light In The Attic won't necessarily be looking to develop another vinyl mixtape at quite the same pace that Mighty Mo will be releasing albums). I obviously have some built-in affinity for Mighty Mo because they're working with artists of today while Light In The Attic's collection features, for the most part, artists it's literally impossible to see perform because they passed away many years ago.

And if there's a more fundamental difference between the two albums it really hinges on the progress of time and the impermanent nature of life. This Record Belongs To _______ is based on the view of listening at home (preferably with a physical object) as the primary source to developing a musical background, while Smiles Ahead views the album merely as the gateway to the concert experience, where lasting musical memories will be made. Neither is necessarily correct, nor are they mutually exclusive -- but which one you gravitate to says quite a bit about how you want your kids to approach music.

There is a third way as well.

If there was any musical legacy my parents left me, it probably had its origins in 1984, the year we moved to Texas. That was the summer I taped a penny to an ad ripped out of who knows where, and I joined the Columbia House Record Club for the first time. Their legacy was letting their middle schooler agree to a contractual obligation and letting me choose 12 cassettes of my very own. I can't remember the whole dozen -- there was a Bruce Springsteen album (Born in the USA), something from Slade which featured their hit "Run Runaway," and beyond that, I have no specific memory.

But I'm pretty sure that I spent much of that summer in an apartment, listening to those tapes every day, reading those mailings and scanning the hundreds of album names available to me. That was probably the summer I became an honest-to-goodness music fan, all because my parents let me do my own thing.

I know that parents want to provide a broad set of experiences for their kids, and giving them musical experiences both recorded and live are important as part of that, particularly if you can give them experiences viewed as high quality. But eventually you have to let go, and regardless of whether you played Harry Nilsson, Caspar Babypants, or even Mantovani for your kids, they'll find their own set of musical heroes. It's not so much the stops along the way as it is the journey itself.

Note: I received copies of both albums for possible review.

Emily White: NPR Intern. Future Parent.

There was a big kerfuffle last year when an NPR intern by the name of Emily White noted she had paid very little money for the music in her collection.

Commence Internet apoplexy.

The response that got the most attention was a long response from David Lowery, best known for his work in Camper Van Beethoven and Cracker, who is probably one of the smartest guys in rock music, not to mention very knowledgeable about the economics of the recording industry. (His presentation at the EMP Pop Conference a couple years back was thoroughly entertaining and enlightening.) It is multiple thousands of words, Lowery’s response, but let me sum it up: Emily was wrong.

At the most basic of levels, I agree with Lowery, though my notions of why Emily was wrong had more to do with ethical considerations than econo-ethical reasons. Meaning, an illegal download is something done without the content creator’s consent. Lowery also suggested that the low rate of return of services such as Spotify and Pandora treat musicians unfairly, a topic he returned to in a slightly overhyped manner a year later.

My purpose here is not to address the idea of whether there is such a thing as "fair trade music." Instead, I want to look forward 10 years to when Emily becomes a parent.

OK, I don't know anything about Emily and her personal life. But even if she doesn't have kids, plenty of her friends will. And the question I want to address here is, what does that mean for kids music?

I think that most kids musicians would feel pretty lucky in that their fans (or, rather, their parents) actually buy CDs. Or iTunes downloads.

They are not looking on illegal downloading sites.

Yet.

But things are changing quickly. With services like Spotify and Pandora allowing streaming of music for free (with varying types of controls), even law-abiding folks have ever-increasing opportunities to listen to their favorite music -- or their kids' favorite music -- without having to pay a cent. That's not to mention services like Bandcamp and Soundcloud which make it easy for musicians to share their music for free.

Not that all of them want. Justin Roberts has led the charge, kindie-wise, against Spotify. In an article in the Chicago Tribune a few weeks back, Roberts notes he gets about a half-cent per song -- that'd be 6 cents if Roberts put his latest album Recess on Spotify (it's not -- just the title track). He notes that "It's frustrating to see something that I spend a year of my life working on and a large amount of money to make be almost completely worthless when it comes out." And from that perspective, who could blame him? There are probably only a handful of albums I've ever listened to 150 times or more, which would generate the same net revenue that buying the album for $12 on Amazon would probably provide.

It should be clear that Spotify is not a revenue generator. It is, at best -- if at all, and it's not clear that it is -- a promotional tool that might generate enough money in a year for Roberts to have dinner out, maybe with his wife, but if so, then not at a very fancy place.

So he's taking a stand for purchasing albums. In an interview this summer with Kids Can Groove, Roberts said:

"I think streaming services like Spotify and Pandora are great for music discovery, however, they are quickly becoming a substitute for people actually purchasing recorded music and I find that troubling. As an independent artist with a small but devoted fan base, I rely on people purchasing recordings to pay back the expensive costs of making a professional sounding record. Beyond that, sales of recorded music has been one of my main sources of income as an independent musician.”

The problem as I see it, is Emily White.

Well, not Emily specifically -- I've never met her. But even if she's the exception now -- and I'm not sure she is -- she won't be the exception ten or even five or even fewer years from now.

The worst-case scenario is this -- music, along with all sorts of other entertainment, becomes increasingly commoditized. There are no more personal relationships with musicians as music becomes just another thing to fill an entertainment gap. And getting music -- entertainment -- for free or via all-you-can-eat entertainment buffets becomes the default mode of consumption, which works out OK if you're Beyonce or Lady Gaga or whoever else can afford to invest a million or two in generating a blockbuster, but not so well for artists in niche fields. (While I'd like to believe the fanciful scenario of Jennifer Egan's incredible prize-winning novel A Visit from the Goon Squad , I don't see kids music saving the record business.)

On top of that, kids' musicians face the additional challenge of recreating their fan base every 5 years or so as fans age out of their target audience. At least Beyonce and Lady Gaga (and even, it should be noted, fellow Spotify-hater Thom Yorke of Radiohead) have years of fanbases which slowly accrete.

Am I suggesting that every kids musician give up the ghost now? Are they all doomed? Well, no, but I think that the kindie world needs to re-think what they're doing. I'm not saying that kids musicians haven't thought of these issues -- and in many cases, folks will say "Der. Known that and been doing that for years now." And I know that what I'm about to say is easy for someone who isn't trying to make a living making music -- believe me, I totally get that. But here is what I think artists, even and especially kindie artists, will have to do to keep making a living.

1) You are not in the record business anymore -- you are in the music business: It may take a little longer, but eventually musicians will not make the majority of their income from selling records. They will have to make up the difference from streams, from concert revenue, merch sales, and the kindness of strangers.

2) You are not in the music business -- you are in the relationship business: How are you going to make money? You're going to convince families that they should let you into their lives. For a lot of artists, that's going to be through performing live. For some others, that may be through media for which music is secondary -- books, videos, apps, puppet shows. And for a handful, it may still be through selling records, either on CD or as bits. But I think artists will make most of their money through the connection -- intense connections even -- they make, especially in ephemeral, not-to-be-duplicated ways.

Why are Kickstarter projects all the rage right now? It's because people want to connect to and support the work of creators. In fact, while I the pre-order is the most popular type of reward for music projects, I think there's room to convince fans to contribute for the sheer joy of connection.

It is possible that some artists may also make their living through performing for non-paying crowds -- in libraries, for example, or in schools. But long-term success in the former is going to require that same connection that good artists have had for centuries. And success in the latter will increasingly put you, the artist, in the role of teacher of a subject. Can you tell stories that teach kids a specific subject? Is that what you want to do? If so, great -- if not, then you need to find a new venue. (And, while we're on that subject -- yes, you should find the venue.)

3) You are in it for the long haul: Finally, I think that it's possible that one of kindie artists' greatest hurdles is inextricably linked to one of kindie music's keys to long-term success. Kids musicians need to constantly find new audiences as their old ones age out. But at some point, those audiences become parents.

They become, in short, Emily White. All that time spent dealing with parents as the intermediators suddenly becomes less important as those 28-year-olds remember being 5 years old spinning around at a concert, laughing to a story told on CD, or watching a funny video on YouTube. I joke about how nobody becomes a parent and says with an awed voice, "They write books for kids?" because that's the situation we're in when it comes to kids music. What happens 5 years from now when the generation who grew up on Ralph's World's debut album, or Laurie Berkner's Whaddaya Think of That? , or Dan Zanes' Rocket Ship Beach , or Roberts' Great Big Sun welcomes a child into the world?

If that artist is still making music, it's possible that they could recoup the benefit of those parents remembering the joy they felt dancing to Justin Roberts at the Getty Museum on a bright summer Saturday afternoon. They could even recoup the benefit of grandparents remembering the joy they felt watching their kid dancing to Justin Roberts at the Getty Museum on a bright summer Saturday afternoon.

Those moments, moments that artists like Roberts and dozens of others excel at creating, are what will convince parents like Emily White to share their money.

Textbooks and Novels

A couple weeks ago, I wrote a kindie manifesto, my attempt to synthesize several years of thinking about the purpose and value of music for families. In some respects, it was a starting point for a conference presentation I've not been asked to deliver, and in that way, it is the first of a three-part series.

Part two below is something I've been pondering for well over a year. It's me trying to state more plainly (albeit wordily) my preferences as a parent, listener, and reviewer. Part three... well, I'm pretty sure it'll surprise you when I get around to writing it. But there's plenty to consider (and for some of you, disagree with).

***

I have a (well-deserved) reputation for not taking out too much after things I consider poorly done. It's a little frustrating to me because one of the reasons I started writing kids music reviews online is that I couldn't find much in the way of reviews that provided some gradation of quality. Everything in magazines was uniformly awesome, even though once you listened, things clearly weren't.

Add to that my firm belief that taste is subjective and my own consensus-driven nature in many ways, and the result is not much in the way of "this is bad" kind of reviews. I have a general rule -- totally unanalyzed, but I think it's probably pretty close to the truth -- that the top 20% of kids music albums can appeal to most listeners, the worst 20% will appeal to very, very few, and the other 60% in the middle will affect different listeners differently. So that's 80% that some person somewhere not related to the musician will likely enjoy.

In addition, the nature of music discovery these days on the internet means that the only thing worse than a bad review is no review at all.

But I do try to provide some sense of comparative narrative when I write about kids music here. Some albums or videos are good for certain listeners, some are good for just about everybody, and some are basically unreservedly awesome.

And on rare occasions I say something like I did about the Grammys 18 months ago, I tend to couch it in very muted terms -- "hey, this is just my personal opinion."

Still, even in that case, I got some pushback, and most of it sort of revolved around the idea that we (or I) should be more supportive of the kids music scene generally, that suggesting that some artists aren't as popular or central or whatever other comparative adjective you want to use as others is definitely not supportive.

So here are a few words about what I like in kids music, offered not to denigrate what I don't like, but to explain why I think the music I do like it supportive of the genre as a whole.

***

My questions to artists is whether they're writing novels or textbooks.

Textbook-writing is a noble profession. Writing books or apps or whatever we're going to be writing in the 21st century is An Important Job. My dad wrote and/or edited a whole series of computer science-related textbooks related to his work. Textbook writers are trying to help people learn something, and what could be wrong with that?

Absolutely nothing.

Me, I'm a guy with a graduate degree earned in the 20th century. I have read a lot of textbooks in my time. And, I can tell you, while some of those textbooks must have been important to my learning as I grew up, I don't remember the name of a single textbook author, or textbook, for that matter.

Not a one.

And you probably can't, either. OK, maybe you can remember one textbook that totally changed your life, maybe even its author(s), but those are the exceptions that prove the rule.

On the other hand, how many novels can you remember? How many authors did you discover when you were 9 or 14 or 20 or 26 whose reading affected you deeply, whose work you followed, maybe for 5 years, maybe for 25? Sure, there are a ton of books you've read and forgot about before it made it back to the library, used bookstore, or donation bin (or was swiped to delete off your e-reader), but there are probably a few books you've carried around (physically and metaphorically) through thick and thin.

The choice facing a kids' musician is whether they want to be a textbook author or a novelist.

Do they want to write and perform music who literal raison d'etre is to teach kids about a particular subject? Or are they trying to make art that might communicate something ineffable about life, or just bring joy?

It doesn't matter how important the subject is that a musician is trying to teach -- if that is the primary reason for the existence of the music being made, then parents (and not a few kids) will sniff that out.

Note that lots of art -- kids music included -- teaches. I'm more concerned with music that seems to be crafted to impart a lesson rather than tell a story. The line between teaching and preaching is not easily defined, but most folks of any age know it when they hear it. As I summarized the concept in my manifesto, "stories not messages." I believe kids and adults retain much more the former than the latter. I think the Deedle Deedle Dees' songs are great because they're much more in the "stories" camp than trying to teach kids essential facts about Important Historical Figures.

And parents? We're in the dream business. We want our kids -- and ourselves -- to be transported. To have somebody put into words and music things that sound prosaic coming out of our own mouths. We want, when possible, to share those experiences with kids.

Let me be clear: if someone wants to make music whose purpose is to teach a subject, I think that's great. (Music-education basic music is another subject entirely that doesn't quite fit in this model, but we have used that a lot in our family.) But the music that will live on in our family is most likely going to be music which reflects kids' experiences and joy.

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I wrote a lot of this while traveling to New York City for Kindiefest. Because it's such a long haul for me to get to Brooklyn, I try to spend at least a little time being a tourist. This time I went (back) to the Museum of Modern Art. The place was absolutely packed. Great crowds of people looking at art made a century ago or more. Artists followed their muses, and their names are now known forever. The people who drew the many different maps that helped me get from Arizona to MOMA performed a valuable service to me but I have totally forgotten those maps.

I hope I've been open to recognizing music made for all purposes, but when it comes to kids music, I have a preference for novels over textbooks. This site has been an expression of that. Kids music in the form of "novels" takes many forms here, from silly to serious to sublime. As my own kids slowly slide out of the kindie target age range, I think the albums they'll remember will be the ones that inspired them, not lectured them. The songs that encouraged them to find their own path, not told them what path to walk down. The music that encouraged more questions rather than gave them the answers.

I realize that praising novelists over textbook writers will sound ironic from someone whose site has tended toward the encyclopedic and recommendation-based. And I realize that music and programs with specific pedagogical intent may be increasingly important as funding for music within schools is increasingly directed to specific pedagogical purposes. I am just standing up for the idea that there is another approach to making music for families -- the "dream business" -- and that that's the approach which will, over time, have the greatest impact in keeping kids music a genre to be celebrated.