In theory, the success of Kidz Bop makes sense. Kids like pop music and they like singing along to it, so why wouldn’t they like to hear G-rated versions sung by kids like them? In practice, however, Kidz Bop is both torturous to any parents born with eardrums and generally creepy as hell. That fact is never more clear than when you sync the audio of a Kidz Bop song with the original artist’s music video. The effect is really… something.
This all started when Twitter user and Mariah Carey enthusiast @Antferny made the grave mistake of Kidz-Bopping the music video for “We Belong Together.” The new vocal track made the normally pitch-perfect Carey sound like a drunk coworker at the office karaoke party that was being backed by a choir of weird, tone-deaf children. But with each successive music video, things became more and more unsettling.
Why anyone at Kidz Bop thought Christina Aguilera’s BDSM-themed “Not Myself Tonight” would be an appropriate thing for kids to listen to, let alone sing, is beyond us. And we’d love to meet the pale, spiked-haired children out there demanding a cover of Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life.” But the crowning achievement of this Twitter thread is without a doubt the school-play-like rendition of the skit from the “Oops!…I Did It Again” video that inexplicably references Titanic.
If this thread teaches us anything, it’s that—despite what the people at Kidz Bop would lead you to believe—“kid-friendly” songs about sex are still songs about sex. So if you’re a parent that’s even considering buying one of these albums, just cut out the middle man and buy the original. At least that way your kids will hear some decent vocals in between all the BDSM stuff.