Fids and Kamily 2013 Music Awards Announced!

When I started this website more than nine years ago, I held in my mind two slightly contradictory notions about music reviews:

1) There was not enough distinction between music reviews, especially for kids -- music was uniformly good in many reviews -- and therefore finer distinctions needed to be made to assist parents in allocating finite resources (monetary and time).

2) Cultural reviews are inherently biased and basing one's own opinion of a cultural product on that of just one other person could be deficient.

In other words, individual reviews are both important and insufficient.

I've tried to write at this site in a way that honors both notions. While I do tend to cover only music worth the time of at least some portion of my audience, there is some gradation in my reviews. And I've always tried to convey the idea that these are just my opinions. Really well-informed opinions based on thousands of hours of listening to thousands of albums, but opinions nonetheless.

All of which is to say that I consider the founding of the Fids and Kamily Music Awards one of the best things I've done for kids music. Since 2006, I, along with Bill Childs (Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child) and Gwyneth Butera (Gooney Bird Kids) (who took over for Amy Davis) have coordinated the awards, soliciting Top 10 lists from the people who spend more time listening to kids music than anybody in the country. There's lots of great kids music out there, but Fids and Kamily highlights the best of the best.

This year's list of 2013's best albums features some familiar faces along with a few newcomers to the list. It's 2013, so how about the Top 13 albums of the past year, led by Justin Roberts, returning to the top of the Fids and Kamily pile:

1. Justin Roberts - Recess
2. Frances England - Blink of an Eye
3. Alastair Moock - Singing Our Way Through-Songs for the World's Bravest Kids
4. Dan Zanes and Elizabeth Mitchell - Turn Turn Turn
5. Shine and the Moonbeams - Shine and the Moonbeams
6. Recess Monkey - Deep Sea Diver
7. The Not-Its! - Kidquake
8. Dean Jones - When the World Was New
9. Key Wilde & Mr. Clarke - Pleased to Meet You
10. Justin Roberts - Lullaby
11. Lori Henriques - The World Is A Curious Place to Live
12. Lucky Diaz and the Family Jam Band - Fantastico!
13. Lloyd H. Miller - S.S. Brooklyn

More details on the year's results, including 10 more honorable mention albums and the year's top 6 debut albums can be found on the 2013 results page.

Thanks to all the judges for participating, Bill and Gwyneth for coordinating (especially this year) , Jeff Bogle from Out With the Kids for logo design, and most importantly to all the kids music artists who continue to make such quality music for families to enjoy.

(Oh, and look for my personal lists in the near future.)

Best Kids Music 2011: Top 25 Albums

The high point in my list of the best kids music of 2011 is this, my list of my favorite kids music albums of the year. By "year," again, I mean albums with Nov. 1, 2010 through Oct. 31, 2011 release dates available to the general public. That means albums like Laura Veirs' Tumble Bee, with a Nov. 8, 2011 release date, have to wait another 12 months before appearing in this list. (I would be shocked -- albeit incredibly delighted -- if there were 25 albums better than that particular one in the next year.) I do use the word "favorite" advisedly. I receive something approaching 300 family music albums every year. I review maybe 20% of those. Last year I picked out 20 albums, and cutting off this list this year at 20 just seemed cruel. But, as it turns out, increasing the number on the list to 25 didn't make things any easier. Albums from folks like Laura Doherty, Chip Taylor, Todd McHatton, and ScribbleMonster -- albums I genuinely liked -- didn't make the list. That's what happens when albums in the top 10% of everything I heard this year can't fit into the number of slots available; I had probably about 40 albums I was seriously considering for this list. So the difference between what goes in this list and what stays off is as much about personal preferences as it is about "objective" quality. (That's why I came up with the idea for Fids and Kamily, thinking that the personal preferences of many folks would be a much better approximation of "best.") In any case, here are those 25 albums, ranked from most favorite to a little less most favorite, that I (and we) most appreciated this year. (As always, the top 10 reflects my Fids and Kamily ballot.)

1. Caspar Babypants Sing Along! [Review] "I really, really like Sing Along! -- the Caspar Babypants disks have been favorites at our house for a long time, and I see no reason why this new album won't join its predecessors in heavy rotation. If he can keep it up, Chris Ballew might just create a body of work for preschoolers to rival Raffi's."

Great Kids Music: 2011 Fids and Kamily Awards Announced

It's November, which in my mind is the month featuring two great things worth celebrating: 1) bountiful harvests and gratitude (tip o' the cap to my favorite holiday, Thanksgiving), and 2) kids music. This was the sixth year for the Fids and Kamily Awards, and this weekend the list of the top kids and family music of the year was announced, led by Recess Monkey's win for FLYING!. Every year it's hard for judges to pick out their individual ten favorite albums of the year, but I heard that complaint more so this year than ever. It's one of the reasons I came up with the idea for F&K -- ask me tomorrow what my ten favorite albums of the year were, and you're liable to get a different answer than what I gave in my F&K vote. But crowdsourcing the thing helps even out those ups and downs and personal idiosyncratic preferences. F&K's 29 judges this year (the largest judge pool in our history) listen to a lot of music and the list that resulted is a great list to share with friends who aren't yet completely clued in to this kids music resurgence. Thanks as always to my fellow F&K coordinators Bill Childs and Gwyneth Butera and of course to all the judges. Thanks, too, to Jeff Bogle for updating the F&K logo. It was fun -- let's vote next year, OK? Complete list of winners after the jump.

Fids & Kamily Awards To Be Announced This Weekend!

It's not often that I use exclamation points in blog post titles, but I do think this is a big deal. This Saturday, we'll be announcing the winners of the 2010 edition of the Fids and Kamily Awards, the fifth annual (really, I checked) roundup of the year's best family music from all sorts of folks who spend an insane amount of time listening to kids music. We compile the results and you, dear readers, are the winners. You can listen to Spare the Rock, Spoil the Child this Saturday, Nov. 20th from 8 AM to 10 AM East Coast time to hear the albums revealed, or just head over to the Fids and Kamily website where we'll be revealing them relatively simultaneously (we hope). It's been a great year for kids music, family music, kindie music, or whatever you call it. The list of winners is proof...

The Fids and Kamily Awards Are Here! The Fids and Kamily Awards Are Here!

OK, they were here yesterday, but it's been a busy weekend, and I'm just now getting around to spreading the word a little bit wider. That's right, the Fids and Kamily Awards for 2009 were announced yesterday, highlighting the best music of the year for kids and families as voted on by about 2 dozen folks who listen to more kids music than, well, just about anybody. Anyway, you can go see the full list of 11 winners and 12 honorable mentions or the other 42 albums also receiving votes. The Top 11 albums are listed after the jump. Many thanks to the judges and especially Gwyneth and Bill who along with me coordinated this year's poll...

This Was My Saturday

Wake up. Eat breakfast, make sure the posts for the 2008 Fids and Kamily Awards are posting. They're not, curse time zone issues, get those straightened out. And congratulations to Justin Roberts, who took top prize (for the second time in three years) for the fabulous Pop Fly!. Congratulations, too, to the rest of the Top 10, the 10 honorable mentions, and all the nominated albums. (And thanks to Bill and Amy and all the judges for their help.) Then it was off to soccer...