Announcing the Best Kids Music of the Decade

I've spent a long time thinking about kids music and trying to elevate the genre's visibility, both generally and as well for the very, very best of it.  One of the efforts I'm most proud of relative to that latter category is the Fids and Kamily Music Awards, which compiles top 10 lists from a lot of people who spend a lot of time listening to a lot of kids music.  The 2016 awards will be announced later this week, but this summer I realized that this would be the 10-year anniversary of starting the awards in 2006.

With that in mind, we put out a call to Fids & Kamily judges past and present and asked them to give us their list of the best kids music of the past decade.  To help them a bit, we limited the choices to the 122 ranked winners over the first ten years of the awards, and told them to give us their 20 choices, ranked in the same general way they rank their top 10 lists for the regular awards.

The result is a list of the top 20 kids music albums of the past decade, with another 20 albums awarded honorable mention.  The top five?

1.  The Okee Dokee Brothers - Can You Canoe? (2012)
2.  Molly Ledford and Billy Kelly - Trees (2015)
3.  Dan Zanes and Friends - Catch That Train! (2006)
4.  Justin Roberts - Jungle Gym (2010)
5.  Justin Roberts - Pop Fly (2008)

That is an excellent, excellent list, in my opinion, a great start to any kids music library (be that an actual library, or a family's iPhone playlist.  I encourage you to see the rest of the list of the best kids and family music of the past decade.  I'll have some thoughts on the results at some point soon, but for the moment, thanks to all the judges, artists, readers, and Bill Childs of Spare the Rock Spoil the Child, a Fids & Kamily co-founder who continues to work on this with me today.

Logo credit: 2006-2015 Fids and Kamily Awards logo courtesy Jeff Bogle / Out With The Kids