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Ever since 2001, the smiling young collective known as the Kidz Bop Kids has offered up countless chirpy, family-friendly covers of pop hits. The Kidz Bop Kids have been through god knows how many iterations over the years. Zendaya was a Kidz Bop Kid once! So was Becky G! But even as the group itself has changed, their method has not. Sometimes, the Kidz Bop Kids' lyrically edits of those pop hits can be very funny, as when they took on Chappell Roan's "Good Luck, Babe!" two years ago. Sometimes, though, they can fundamentally change the meaning of a lyric, to the point where the guy who wrote the original song feels like he has to say something.
The soft-hearted singer-songwriter Noah Kahan seems like an unlikely pick for a Kidz Bop cover, and he also doesn't seem like the type to write a lyric that would need a full Kidz Bop overhaul. But that's what happened. Kahan is a huge deal right now, and he returned with the sprawling, chart-topping album The Great Divide earlier this year. Its title track debuted in a Grammy-night MasterCard commercial and charted at #6 on the Hot 100. You know what that means, baby! It's getting Kidz Bopped! Except the original song had a line about "the cops," and the Kidz Bop Kids simply could not leave that one unchanged.
Noah Kahan's version of "The Great Divide" begins with this line: "I can't recall the last time that we talked about anything but lookin' out for cops." The Kidz Bop Kids made just the slightest of alterations, instead singing, "I can't remember the last time that we talked about anything but hanging with the cops."
Hmm. Yeah. Interesting. Raises questions. Like, why are they always talking exclusively about hanging with the cops, to the exclusion of any other subject? Even if you love cops, that seems slightly concerning. On Twitter yesterday, Kahan highlighted that difference and commented, "Such a specific choice." He's not wrong.
At least the Kidz Bop version doesn't tell me that getting closer to the music that connects us is priceless. Kidz Bop 53 is out now on Kidz Bop Enterprises LLC/Concord, and you might be interested to know that its Shaboozey cover is titled "A Bop Song."
English (US) · 