A disco hippo, an bubble trying to stay out of trouble, penguins in California, a dancing flower, and a robot with a lot of feelings: These clever creatures (along with that rainbow unicorn on the album cover) are a pretty good indication that children’s artist Caspar Babypants isn’t taking the title of his 13th album, Keep it Real!, too literally.
Caspar Babypants is the alter ego of Chris Ballew, frontman of the adult band The Presidents of he United States of America. As a children’s artist, Ballew/Babypants has become the master of kid’s music that the whole family can love. If you have kids and a car … or a living room … Caspar Babypants is going to serve you well.
I’m a newbie to Caspar Babypants, myself, and what fun we’ve been having with with Keep It Real!. The opening track, “Made for You This Little Song” is a warm welcome. “I made for you this little song, and it is just one minute long,” it begins, and then we get a quick tour through the elements of the song (“guitars that I did strum and a really simple little drum,” “harmonies for warmth,” etc.). This doesn’t just introduce this one minute song, but helps us to think about the musical elements in the remaining nineteen tracks.
Not that this is a “learning” album. It’s much more quirky, silly fun than any “A-B-Cs-and-1-2-3″s, though your kids are bound to pick up a few quirky little facts or new words that roll off the tongue. Miss 5’s favorite song is the bouncy second track, “Bookworm,” about the bookworm who can never come out to play because he’s always reading a new book. She loves the turn of phrase “he was just beginning to read the history of history.”.
Miss 18 months has a clear favorite, as well. I walked into the room to find her spinning around and singing “baby, baby!” to the California surf-sounding “Your Are the Baby.” I’ve been popping this one on on the regular just to get a big smile out of her.
I quite like all the invented characters who inhabit Caspar Babypants sphere. As an example, here are the opening lyrics to “Emotional Robot”:
Let me tell you a story about a robot with a heart,
Tried to be a calculator, but he just didn’t fit the part.
Tried algorithms, trigonometry, and other complex math,
But, all those operations didn’t make him cry or laugh.
The emotional robot “gets rusty when he cries.” Then, there’s the “Disco Hippo.” A lot of animals are dancing in this song, but every night of the week that hippo is tearing up the dance floor. The alt-folky “When a Penguin Moves to California” imagines what will happen to a penguin in the coastal state, like swimming with movie stars and learning earthquake evacuation plans. And, here are the grand adventures of a bubble in “Bubble Rap”:
Songs about music are a theme in Keep It Real!, as well. In addition to the “one minute long” opening song, there’s “Always Keep a Ukulele in Your Trunk” (I suppose you’ll have to translate trunk to “boot,” Aussie friends). The ukulele has company in “Simple Symphony,” which builds to include all of the instruments in an orchestra. Those symphony instruments boom away in the funny “My Lullaby Got too Loud,” which the lyrics say “was meant to help a baby chill out, but somehow, it got too loud.”
The album does end on a genuine, actually quiet, lullaby, “Me and You,” with a tinkling keyboard, and sweet lyrics about all sorts of things that go together, “just like me and you.”
Caspar Babypants may not be completely keeping it “real” in this album full of fictional characters, imaginative landscapes, musical jokes, and funny phrases, but Keep in Real! really is one of the most joyous, smile-inducing albums in our collection. Reality is overrated when you and your kids can spend an hour singing and dancing in Caspar Babypants’ world.
More about Keep it Real! and all of Caspar Babypants’ albums on his website.
Read the rest of our Listening Ears reviews for more non-annoying children’s music!
Littlefolk by Angie Who
Little Steps, Big Adventures by Tiptoe Giants
Hey Hey, Let’s Play by Nay Nay
Helpful Songs for Little People by the Teeny Tiny Stevies
Beyond the Little Star by Benny Time
Season One by The Vegetable Plot
Here Comes Science! by They Might Be Giants
Storytime Singalong Volumes 1 and 2 by Emily Arrow
Bunny Rumble by Bunny Racket