Best Kids Music of 2015: Top 30 Albums

Slowly but surely, I'm getting better about writing these "Best of" lists in something approaching timeliness. Even if it might be a bit late for holiday gift-giving purposes, I'm writing about the best of 2015 in 2015.

This past year was another good one in terms of new releases, so once again it was difficult to narrow down the musical year -- I'd guess that I once again listened to 250-300 albums -- to what is, in essence, the my favorite 10%.

As always, my year-end best-of list matches the Fids and Kamily year -- that is to say, from October 1, 2014 through September 30, 2015. So some good albums from the last couple months [waves at They Might Be Giants] will just have to wait for next year's list.

#1 (tie) - Molly Ledford & Billy Kelly - Trees

[Review] - "Like the trees they sing about, this duo's connection six years ago has grown into a sturdy friendship and musical collaboration. You're unlikely to hear a more joyful celebration of the natural world and our relation to it this year."

#1 (tie) - The Pop Ups - Great Pretenders Club

[Review] - "So often trailblazing releases are notable more for their context than their content, but in the case of Great Pretenders Club, the album's music is every bit as notable as the way it's been introduced to the world. This is, simply put, one of the year's best albums."

#3 (tie) - Lori Henriques - How Great Can This Day Be?

[Review] - "After winning the Joe Raposo Children’s Music Award, named for the composer of classic songs for Sesame Street and the Muppets, last year, her smart and joyful music, which sounds like it’d fit right in on those classic shows, is finding a wider audience. Her new album How Great Can This Day Be shows off those musical talents."

#3 (tie) - Red Yarn - Deep Woods Revival

[Review] - "Red Yarn’s fervor for American folk music is evident on Deep Woods Revival. While folk music has never gone away in the children’s music genre, he forcefully makes the case for its continued relevance in the era of the mp3."

#5 (tie) - Big Block Singsong - Big Block Singsong Greatest Hits Vol. 1

[Review] - "So, yeah, I’m late to the party, but better late than never. Big Block Singsong is ten tons of fun. After listening and watching, your kids’ll probably have a two-banana day, too."

#5 (tie) - Duke Otherwise - Beehives and Bedheads

[Review] - "Looking for an album that provides guidance on moving through early childhood life transitions? Move along, then, because this album kicks off with a song called “Dancing Pig” that answers the question, “What would a Tom Waits song about a prancing porcine sound like?,” and never really gets any less weird from there."

#5 (tie) - The Amazing Keystone Big Band w/ David Tennant - Peter and the Wolf and Jazz!

[Review] - "The melodies themselves are unchanged, but the band's arrangement brings in a wide variety of jazz styles -- stride piano, hip-hop, free jazz, blues, cool jazz, and the like. None of the stylistic shifts seem out of place -- rather, they feel appropriate to the story."

#8 (tie) - Josh and the Jamtones - Rocksteady

[Review] - "Have I made it clear enough that Rocksteady is a party, through and through? Because it is, enough so that your kids probably won't even need that lullaby album to fall asleep to after dancing like crazy."

#8 (tie) - Jazzy Ash - Bon Voyage

[Review] - "With Bon Voyage, Jazzy Ash fully connects with her own family’s musical heritage, yet incorporates those 100-year-old traditions into 21st century kids music. It's a buoyant and warm-hearted album for the younger set."

#8 (tie) - Charlie Hope - Where the Path Will Wind: Songs, Stories and Friends 2

[Review] - "Where the Path Will Wind is essentially an audio magazine, an aural equivalent, perhaps, to her Sing As We Go! video series."

#8 (tie) - Tim Kubart - Home

[Review] - "While I've always thought Kubart's music had their share of pop hooks, Home is bursting at the seams with them and is his best effort yet... [B]less Tim Kubart and his big pop heart."

#8 (tie) - Alison Faith Levy - The Start of Things

[Review] - "Imagine, however, if other musical strains of the [1960s] -- psychedelic pop, Phil Spector's Wall of Sound production -- also found themselves working their way into kids' music with songs for the youngest listener."

#8 (tie) - Caspar Babypants - Night Night!

[Review] - "I hope Ballew doesn't take this the wrong way, but his album is forgettable in all the right ways. What I mean by that is the music, while catchy, isn't necessarily one bouncy hook-filled song after another. Rather, it features a more consistent -- and obviously far mellower -- tone."

The eagle-eyed among you will note that that list includes a baker's dozen of albums, not ten. I didn't squeeze an extra three albums into my ballot -- only 3 of those 6 albums tied for 8 made it in. But it was such a hard choice that I'm sure I'd pick a different 3 every week. For Fids & Kamily I need to make a choice. But this is my list, and so I'm listing thirteen albums.

After these top thirteen, distinguishing between the rest of my list becomes even more difficult. So once again I'm taking the easy way out - alphabetical order for albums 14 through 30.

Turkey Andersen - Turkey Andersen [Review]

The Bazillions - On the Bright Side [Review]

Bunny Clogs - Whales Can't Whistle [Review]

Cat Doorman - Calling All the Kids to the Yard [Review]

Sonia De Los Santos - Mi Viaje: De Nuevo Leon to the New York Island [Review]

Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band - Adelante! [Review]

Hilary Grist - Tomorrow Is a Chance To Start Over [Review]

Gustafer Yellowgold - Dark Pie Concerns [Review]

Lloyd Miller - Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! [Review]

Alastair Moock - All Kinds of You and Me [Review]

Keith Munslow - Tiny Destroyer [Review]

Pointed Man Band - The Flight of the Blue Whale [Review]

Recess Monkey - Hot Air [Review]

Renee and Friends - Simpatico [Review]

Rocknoceros - Plymouth Rockers [Review]

Big World Audio Theatre - The Peculiar Tales of the S.S. Bungalow [Review]

Suz Slezak - Watching the Nighttime Come [Review]

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.

They Might Be Giants - photo by Shervin Lainez

Interview: John Flansburgh (They Might Be Giants)

Longtime readers will know my affinity for They Might Be Giants. The band's been a part of my life for thirty years now, from their early work in the '80s through their first family album No! in 2002 to three more albums with Disney (Here Come the ABCs, Here Come the 123s, and Here Comes Science). They've done tons more, constantly experimenting with audiences and ways to get their music in front of audiences -- this year, for example, they've released a song and video a week on their new (or old, seeing as it was once just a telephone answering machine) Dial-A-Song website.

After taking a few years off from recording music for a younger audience, the band is back with their fifth album for families, titled Why?. It's every bit as brilliant as their first four kids' albums, and as you might guess from the title, the album's got more than its fair share of songs about or from the perspective of kids who don't necessarily follow the straight and narrow. (For both good and... less than good.)

TMBG guitarist John Flansburgh (that's him on the right in the picture above) recently answered a few questions about his own level of disobedience growing up, the process of making the album, and whether more kids' albums are in the band's future.

There are some songs on the album about misbehaving -- or at least very independent -- kids. Were you a bad kid, good kid, or somewhere in between growing up?

There is a lot of misbehaving on this one! So me? I didn’t get into much trouble, although I was a terrible student. As a kid, like a lot of kids, I was pretty manic and had no ability to concentrate unless it involved the radio, old movies, the counter-culture, pop music, cameras or tape recorders. Fortunately, in high school, John and I had great friends and we all kind of hid from the rest of the school together, working on the newspaper and doing a lot of creative projects for fun. All those relationships were really important to me and very formative.

How has it felt as a songwriter to have more relative freedom in not having an album around a loose theme (as on the “Here Comes” albums)?

It was great! It's easy just to write songs for entertainment and not worry about those pesky facts!

Having said that, was there a theme or idea you had running through your head as you were writing and selecting songs for the album?

Well, we’re coming off three educationally-driven projects for Disney and each topic automatically suggested a lot material. With the Why? album we are getting back to writing songs that just work on their own unreasonable terms and that feels different and liberating.

The amount of writing that’s been required of us in the past 15 months has been extraordinary and slightly crazy— 60 songs or so have been finished, with a bunch of smoldering wrecks of abandoned half-songs. I really can barely remember the selection process with so many weeks on deadline for Dial-A-Song. It’s kind of been just one big musical slalom ride. We just work as hard and as fast as possible in every direction.

Were there songs that you released through Dial-A-Song that you didn’t expect to put on “Why?” that, because of fans’ reactions, you subsequently decided to include on the album?

It would have been interesting to use Dial-A-Song as a beta-tester, but everything has to be planned out so many months in advance. We’ve tried to only include songs from Why? on Dial-A-Song that would also scan as suitable for adults. This is where the educational thing would have really gotten in the way, but with the Why? songs it’s been okay. A song like "Hello Mrs. Wheelyke" is probably a good example of how a song can work both ways.

But there was a moment that our intentions were not so clear just between me and John; during the creation of one track called "Thinking Machine" we did some file trading long distance and without a lot of conversation. It flowed like this: I put together the beat, John added a bass line and handed off some words, I sang them and put together a chorus, and then John sang the “answers.” And when we were done it was revealed that through the whole process John thought we were working on a kids song and I thought it was very clearly for adults. I don’t even know how it never came up, but it just happened like that.

How do you decide when you want someone else, such as your wife Robin Goldwasser, to sing lead vocals (be it on this album or generally)?

Really it is the vibe of the song that suggests it to us. “Oh You Did” has a dialogue set up in the song between Robin and me and John (in the role of the misbehavers). It’s exciting to hear a different voice on a song. Robin has a beautiful voice, but for TMBG I think her secret weapon is that she can subtly add character to her voice that really works with our material. On the kids albums she often is playing the “kind lady” which has an official, traditional kids music vibe. But she’s also sung kids parts on a bunch of the Disney themes and did a much brassier turn on the Dr. Evil song in the Austin Powers movie. We’re taking full advantage of her versatility.

What do you personally get out of making music for kids (is that different from the rest of your musical output)?

It’s very free and a pretty happy kind of writing. I think John pointed out that kids have no cultural reference points for music — all songs are all new to them and keeping that in mind is a very liberating headspace to write from. We were never a hit-making band although everyone we worked with thought we should be and that definitely made us self-conscious. Looking back I can’t believe how far we actually got in that straight rock world. We were also closely watched and critiqued by rock critics. It’s nice to just leave that all behind and just make stuff up.

Do you hope to make more kids’ albums in the future?

Absolutely.

Photo credit: Shervin Lainez

Video: "Pretend We Forgot" - The Pop Ups

After the surprise release of their wonderful album Great Pretenders Club, all that's left for The Pop Ups to do is release a bunch of fun videos. The video for "Bird and Rhino" had a distinctive animation style; their new video for "Pretend We Forgot" features some slick dancing from the duo (and, really, mostly) by The Waffle Crew, a group of New York-area dancers. How would you dance if you forgot how to dance? The Waffle Crew (and Jacob and Jason) show us the way.

The Pop Ups - "Pretend We Forgot" [YouTube]

58th Grammy Award Nominations for Best Children's Album

I am of mixed mind when it comes to the Grammys. I'm a fan, of course, of celebrating outstanding achievement in the kids' music world, but sometimes the nominees have been... interesting. Which isn't to say that we should celebrate or denigrate a process depending on how much we personally like or dislike the results, but given the tremendous fluctuation from year to year of what type of albums are getting nominated, in the runup to this morning's announcement of Grammy nominees, I deliberately kept a low-key attitude.

But, hey, setting aside any qualms I have about the Grammys and kids music generally, the list of nominees for Best Children's Album at the 58th Grammy Awards was announced this morning, and it is a fine, fine slate of nominees, including some of the best (and nicest) folks in the kids music genre. It features four newer artists and one legend, Jose-Luis Orozco, who, though his album tends somewhat more toward the folk/educational sound that may not catch as many modern listeners' ears as some of the other nominees here, is, as I said, a legend who I was surprised to find out earned his first Grammy nomination this morning. It's well-deserved.

In any case, here's a list of the five nominees and some links to let you explore further. The Grammys will be awarded Monday, February 15, with the awards in categories like Children's Album to be awarded earlier that weekend.

¡Come Bien! Eat Right!

Jose-Luis Orozco

[Review]

Bilingual album celebrating healthy eating, Orozco's first album on Smithsonian Folkways

Dark Pie Concerns

Gustafer Yellowgold

[Review]

Funny enough this should appear under Orozco's album -- this is all about food, too. But about as far away as possible from that album in style, lyrics, and just about everything else. Wonderful, but in its own way.

Home

Tim Kubart

[Review]

Pop hooks. So. Many. Pop. Hooks.

How Great Can This Day Be

Lori Henriques

[Review]

Tickles me pink to have Henriques' jazz and jazz-inflected songs on this list of nominees.

Trees

Molly Ledford & Billy Kelly

[Review]

Sui generis album about the natural world from two of kindie's most unique artists.

Monday Morning Smile: "Lightspeed" - Joel Henriques (World Premiere!)

This may be a first -- a combination Monday Morning Smile and world premiere video. It's for the song "Lightspeed" from Joel Henriques. You may know Joel from his own incredibly popular crafting website Made By Joel or the videos he's made for his sister Lori Henriques (I think my favorite is probably "Dinosaur").

Turns out, though, Joel's a bit of a musician himself, and seeing as there's some sort of Star Wars movie coming out later this month, he's gone an rerecorded a song he wrote about 20 years ago recounting the plot of the very first Star Wars movie (Episode IV, to be specific). "Lightspeed" is a funk-rap with a furious guitar line that recounts the story of Luke, Han, Princess Leia, and a certain Wookiee. Thrown in Joel dancing with a vintage Millennium Falcon t-shirt and simple animation based on drawings from his 8-year-old son, and it's a fun 2 minutes of pre-Episode VII hoopla. Not written with kids in mind, but I feel fairly sure that kids'll dig it.

Joel Henriques - "Lightspeed" [YouTube]