There are unlikely cultural institutions, and then there’s Kidz Bop. Over the course of 25 years, what was initially supposed to be a one-off music compilation of kid-friendly cover songs has spawned 52 follow-ups, helped launch careers, and even become a benchmark by which pop artists measure success—one rewritten lyric at a time.
Michael Anderson, Kidz Bop senior vice president of music, has been with the organization since its genesis, working with cofounders Craig Balsam and Cliff Chenfeld to turn 2001’s Kidz Bop 1—featuring 18 reworked hits by Smash Mouth, Britney Spears, Enrique Iglesias, Whitney Houston, the Backstreet Boys, Cher, and more—into a surprise success.
Now, two and a half decades later, Kidz Bop is, in Anderson’s own words, a “global entertainment juggernaut.” He’s biased, but the numbers—more than 24 million albums sold, 53 releases, and some 3,000 songs—aren’t. Only the Rolling Stones (38), Barbra Streisand (34), Frank Sinatra (33), the Beatles (32), and Elvis Presley (27) have had more top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 chart than Kidz Bop, and Anderson helped produce all 24 of them.
Even 25 years in, neither Anderson nor Kidz Bop is slowing down. The brand kicked off its anniversary year with its first concert movie, and in May released Kidz Bop 53. Now, it’s in the midst of a concert tour that kicked off on June 14, with dates that run through the end of the year.
Fast Company sat down with Anderson to talk about his time at Kidz Bop, the year of celebration ahead, and how the music magic happens. Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
You and the Kidz Bop cofounders worked in compilation albums in the early aughts. When did you start realizing that Kidz Bop was becoming something that could stand on its own?
We were first advertising mostly on Nickelodeon, and we were doing well on TV and selling albums. Back then, it was CDs and cassettes on TV. It wasn’t until we put it out at retail, which was October of 2001. Once we saw the response at retail—the first album sold a million copies—we realized, “Oh, we have something big here. It’s really resonating with kids and parents.” We just, for the last 25 years, continued to churn out music and entertainment for kids, and have really evolved the way that we do that over the years.
The big thing about Kidz Bop is how you do what you do, changing the lyrics and working it into a song that is appropriate for that age group. Will you tell me a little bit about that process?
There’s always going to be songs that there’s nothing I can do with them, like they’re just about drinking all night or something. For example, “Where Is My Husband!” by Raye—that’s a song that is just not appropriate for a 9-year-old to be singing. So there’s nothing I can do to make that kid-friendly. But for the most part, there are clean versions of songs already created for radio, so I lean into those. And then there might be a lyric like “damn” that I turn to a simple word like “yeah,” and it just smooths it over and makes it okay.
I think people assume it’s 12 people around a conference room table discussing what the decisions are going to be when it comes to songs and lyrics, but really it’s a much smaller team than that, led by me. I think that’s the biggest misconception. We take fun for kids, safety for kids, and giving parents something that is useful to them very seriously. But in the day-to-day, this is fun for us, as it should be.
How do you decide which songs are going to be on an album and which songs you want to take on for a project?
It really comes down to what is going to be a hit, and I can hear a song and know that it’s going to be a hit. Luckily, I have the job I have, but at this point, pop hits are global because of social media. If a song is a massive hit here, it’s going to be a massive hit around the world.
I’m just picking the songs that really look like they’re going to be the next big global hit and get it recorded so that it’s ready in time to be released as a single or on an album at the same time that the original song is peaking on the charts—so we are out there right alongside the original version of the song. We know that kids want today’s biggest hits, sung by kids for kids, and in order to do that, we have to act quickly.
There’s a lot of talk about people who are, like, “Oh, Kidz Bop did my song.” What is it like to see people in the music industry being excited about Kidz Bop-pifying their song?
These artists that are coming up now, they grew up with Kidz Bop. So for them, this is now a badge of honor. If your song is a big enough hit that Kidz Bop is covering it, it is a rite of passage for them. Alex Warren got really excited about it, and posted about it when we covered “Ordinary.” Lil Nas X, when we first did music videos of “Old Town Road,” he superimposed himself on our music video and was, like, “I’ve made it. I’m now a Kidz Bop song.” It’s really cool to see how much artists love when we cover them at this point.
One thing that I’m sure you’ve been able to watch is the shift in how people encounter music—especially when you started with cassettes and CDs.
It used to be that we sold physical albums, and now it’s about streaming, it’s about our live tour. We now have DJ KB, who’s our mascot that we soft-launched on the tour last year and didn’t expect kids to take to him so immediately. And they love him. Now we’re testing out doing these DJ dance parties with him, and it’s going well so far. It’s interesting. We didn’t just sell albums, but we sold albums and created music videos. But now it’s just the way the world has changed.
We are providing content for kids in a safe, fun way through our music videos. With our music videos, we’ve got watch time of over 201,000 hours, and we’ve got 3,500 pieces of video content over that. Now, at this point, we’ve had 7.2 billion views. With our content, as far as streaming goes, we’ve got over 14 billion streams at this point. Kidz Bop is bigger than ever.
Is there a song that was a really fun challenge to do, or one that you particularly enjoyed getting to work on?
“That’s What I Like” by Bruno Mars, I think, has my favorite lyric change I’ve ever made. Obviously, we can’t mention alcohol, and the original lyric was “strawberry champagne on ice.” And I changed that to “strawberry milkshakes, so nice.” Not only did that resonate for me, but it was something that people have since then called out and had fun with.