Kidsongs
(Redirected from Kids Songs)
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 Behold, the pure embodiment of the “it’s made for kids” excuse.
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Kidsongs is an American children's media franchise that includes Kidsongs Music Video Stories on DVD and video, the Kidsongs TV series, CDs of children's songs, songbooks, sheet music, toys, and a merchandise website. It was created by producer Carol Rosenstein and director Bruce Gowers of Together Again Video Productions (TAVP). The duo had produced and directed over 100 music videos for Warner Bros. Records (WBR) and took their idea of music videos for children to the record label. Warner Brothers funded the first video, "A Day at Old MacDonald's Farm". Shortly thereafter, a three-way partnership formed between TAVP, WBR, and View-Master Video, with TAVP responsible for production and WBR and View-Master responsible for distribution to video and music stores, and toy stores respectively.
Synopsis
A group of fun and energetic kids run their own TV show, acting as the hosts, producers, and writers, featuring music videos from the Kidsongs home video series.
Qualities That Don't Make Us Want Our Kidsongs
- This series was only conceived as a cash-in on Sesame Street and Barney & Friends.
- The premise, as stated in the theme song, is nonsensical because it's about a group of bratty children who pester Hollywood producers to use their studio to produce a show and they reluctantly agree. "Let me ask a question/Can we use the studio?/Don't you say 'no'" This sounds very entitled.
- The Biggles, Billy and Ruby (introduced in 1994), are very annoying, have no personalities, and seem to add nothing to the plot. They also are rather creepy to look at.
- The kids somehow already know them when they make their first appearance in their debut.
- Also, Ruby is supposed to be older than Billy, but the puppetry poorly conveys it due to them being the same height.
- The Scarecrow in the Old McDonald music video is also very terrifying.
- The acting ranges from bad to mediocre. The children are decent, but the adults on the show sound disinterested and bored, the Biggles have grating voices, and in the episode where it's Billy's birthday, the Biggles' father is clearly voiced by a prepubescent boy trying to sound like an adult, it sounds like a little boy making fun of his father. Why can't they hire an actual adult to voice the father?
- The show has terrible song choices for its target audience. While it's fun to play old songs for children, some of the songs have subject manner that is not appropriate for its target audience:
- In the dance episode, the closing song is "Over and Over" which is actually about a man falling for a woman who thinks he's too immature for her. The Biggles' quips ruin the song too.
- The "I Can Do It" episode is full of those examples, like, they play All Shook Up, which is about a woman to play over the dog bathing scene and in the scene where they attempt to teach good health. The song they sing is “Button Your Overcoat” which offers health advice more appropriate for middle-aged adults, not toddlers and preschool-aged children, such as taking naps as 3:00 p.m. sharp and one grain of sugar can cause health problems. The chorus is also bad for the culture, because the “you belong to me” lyric discourages individualism and literally makes parents think their children still ought to be their properties past the age of 30 and not their own people (or make children think they’re someone’s property and not their own people). While the lyric was there because the song was written in the 1950s, back when women were not viewed as people, the show came out at a time when women were seen as people. So, it’s jarring they did not change the lyrics to better match their target audience.
- Most of the songs are horrible and generic. The kids can't even sing, which is extra awful because music is one of the main elements of the series.
- A small handful of songs even cash in on old-fashioned or then-current music trends, with the kids covering songs by various artists who were relevant at the time or used to be relevant before the 1980s. Unintentionally or not, the series seems to exist just to shamelessly promote those artists and nothing more.
- Some songs unintentionally teach bad morals to their target audience:
- During the "I Can Do It" episode, they sing a song called "Peanut Butter and Jelly" which inaccurately teaches children how to make their own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. As the lyrics state that the children have to smash peanuts with their bare hands, squish grapes and slap it on the bread slices. That not only sounds disgusting and unappetizing, but that's not how to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and it also encourages children to make a big mess in the kitchen. It would've been better if the song told children to take jars of peanut butter and jelly out of the cupboards and fridge. Don’t believe us? Listen to the song yourself.
- The Petting Zoo song inaccurately sings about petting zoos. While it starts off innocently, as the song goes on, the song states that the titular petting zoo has animals that are too dangerous to be at a petting zoo such as lions, bears, and monkeys. These are wild animals and have strong defensive abilities capable of attacking not just predators, but also human beings as well with their paws, claws, and teeth.
- To make matters worse, the music video even features the children playing with said animals which encourages children to play with wild animals, which is dangerous, as the animal could attack or in some cases, eat the child and they could get many dangerous diseases that are carried by the animals. Given the animals are babies in song is also bad, because their mothers will immediately attack the children who are playing with their babies and the babies will grow up to be dangerous, unless you care for an animal properly without threatening the wild animal. This is why in most countries it is illegal to keep wild animals as pets, such as deer, as even the most docile of these wild animals could end up spreading parasites and diseases towards humans.
- The show also talks down to its audience at times too, to where it assumes that children are very dumb. The best example is their commercial advertising their DVDs, they don’t say it’s a DVD, they say “put it in the machine, and it plays and plays, again and again, a mom's dream come true.” They should at least tell their audience that it’s a DVD.
- The show even states that it’s made "by kids, for kids" which is insulting because of the messages they teach and the way they talk to the audience at times.
- The Barefootin' song (originally sung by Robert Parker) can easily be taken the wrong way in the show; it even feels more like a DeviantArt or FurAffinity fanfic than an actual song.
Good Qualities
- Not all the songs are poorly chosen or written bad, they do sing fun songs that don’t try to convey a bad lesson and are just fine for young children to listen to such as "At the Hop", "Five Little Monkeys", and "How Does Your Garden Grow?".
- Despite the issues, all of the songs can still be catchy, especially with the lyrics in there, especially if you like to listen to bad songs and find them catchy.
- Most episodes do teach good lessons, like the trains episode.
- The videos from 1985-1993 were better than the post-Biggles era.
Reception
Kidsongs currently has a rating of 7.7/10 on IMDb.
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