Pop Junior

REVIEW

"Pop Junior, an album aimed at very young children, the audience of Nick Jnr, Cartoon Network and CBBC, with the tagline: “The fun never stops - it's pop for tots! “ The album is filled with pop music to appeal to kids and music from television programmes, and is aimed at being their first album. It also includes a DVD featuring many of the tracks to keep them entertained.

With song’s kids will love from TV programmes like, Bob the Builder, The Tweenies, The Powerpuff Girls, Engie Benji and The Lion King film, this will hit the mark with the audience.

Some of the choice of pop songs however seem a little more odd, and are old tracks that I’m not sure young children will know. With tracks from the likes of Steps, S Club 7, Aqua, Vengaboys, DJ Otzi, S Club Juniors and Eiffel 65 these are acts who have either split up or not released any tracks in the lifetime of the album’s target audience or certainly not within their memory, given that this album is aimed at children aged five and under. Whilst these are good tracks that were generally aimed at children at the time of their release I’m just not sure that today’s five year olds will actually know the songs? However they are the sort of catchy songs young children will grow to love and no doubt drive their parent’s crazy with.

However that said there is plenty of stuff they will know such as: Busted with the theme from Thunderbirds, McFly, Dj Casper’s Cha Cha Slide (a definite hit with under 5’s I know) and with the Video featuring on the DVD they can also learn the dance routine! Many of the songs on the album are also described as being “as seen on Tiny Pop channel” so whilst I’ve not heard of the channel or some of these songs (but then I’m not exactly the target audience!) I think kids will know and appreciate these tracks also.

The DVD is good too featuring the video’s of the best song’s from the album, such as Sugababes – Angels With Dirty Faces, featuring The Powerpuff Girls in the video, Steps kid friendly dance routine, the energetic Vengaboys, The Tweenies, Ozone with their cartoon based video and the very strange Scnappi – Das Kline Krokodil. These are all bright colourful videos that will appeal to a young audience.

On the whole a successful album and DVD that will appeal to under 5’s with many songs they will recognise and can sing along to, the remainder being child-friendly songs that although they may not know will soon have them dancing along. The kind of thing children will want to listen to constantly but that will leave their parents wishing they’d never bought it – so a great success!!" - Karen Hagan

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