The stars of tomorrow have to start today, and in days of yore, a good place for talented kids to get their first exposure was on “The Mickey Mouse Club.” Ryan Gosling, Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera were all Mouseketeers. But now that that show is defunct, one alternative is to become a member of the Kidz Bop army.
The long-running series of albums is made by kids in the constantly evolving Kidz Bop house band singing cleaned-up covers of current hits — this month’s 27th edition features versions of Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” and Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass.”
“We joke that it’s the new ‘Mickey Mouse Club,’ ” says Victor Zaraya, COO of Razor & Tie, the record company that has been putting out the series since 2001. “There are a lot of kids who’ve been part of Kidz Bop that have gone on to become models or joined boy bands.”
Examples include Zendaya and Ross Lynch, who both appeared in a Kidz Bop video in 2009. Zendaya, 18, is now the star of Disney Channel sitcom “K.C. Undercover,” and 19-year-old Lynch is a member of the band R5, which is a staple of Radio Disney. Another alum is Elijah J, 17, who was a member of the Kidz Bop crew until 2013, when he joined the R&B outfit Mindless Behavior, which toured with Justin Bieber and Janet Jackson.
The Kidz Bop series started with the idea of filling the need for preteen-friendly music. “Back then, there was only baby music like Barney, or super-aggressive stuff like Eminem — but no middle ground,” says Zaraya.
It’s easy to mock the series’ clumsy sandpapering of suggestive lyrics. A line in Kesha’s “Tik Tok” about brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack Daniels was changed to “I brush my teeth and then I go pack,” while John Legend’s lovelorn lines about “curves and edges” in “All of Me” became “words and edges.”
This tactic has allowed the Kidz Bop crew to tackle racier songs such as Maroon 5 and Christina Aguilera’s “Moves Like Jagger,” but some material is verboten, no matter how successful it’s been. “There’s no way we can do a song like ‘Blurred Lines’ — it’s just too suggestive,” admits Zaraya.
But even without that leery Robin Thicke smash, Kidz Bop has sold a staggering 15 million albums. Nineteen of the 27 editions have hit the Top 10 of the Billboard Chart — only eight artists (including Elvis, Madonna, The Beatles and the Rolling Stones) have had more Top 10 albums.
“We’re going to keep going until we hit Kidz Bop 100,” says Araya.