Whether you have kids or have been around kids at all throughout your life, chances are you both know about children’s music and you have a very strong opinion on it and the sickly-sweet artists who create it. But documentarian Penny Lane is counting on that, just as she has with so many of her prior works. She loves to focus on the outsider and the underestimated; it could be hucksters like John Romulus Brinkley (“Nuts!“) or the Satanic Temple (“Hail Satan?“), or similarly hated mainstream artists like Kenny G (Lane’s previous doc for HBO’s Music Box series, “Listening to Kenny G“).
“Happy And You Know It,” which premiered last Christmas Day on HBO as part of the latest season of Ringer-produced series of music docs, is as gentle and curious as any of Lane’s playful docs. Crucially, she takes the genre seriously, highlighting several artists who have shaped it and are still exploring its boundaries. There are the usual kids-band lifers like a member of global Aussie sensation The Wiggles, as well as moms like Laurie Berkner, whose gentle lullabies have made her a household name. But we also see artists like former President of the United States of America frontman Chris Bellew, who stepped away from alt-rock success to reinvent himself as a solo kids’ act called Casper Babypants.
Then, of course, Lane delves into controversies involving the giants, like the colossally ubiquitous “Baby Shark,” which burst into children’s eyeballs in 2016 courtesy of a YouTube video by South Korean entertainment company Pinkfong; a decade later, a local kids’ entertainer named Johnny Only is still struggling to litigate his claim that their version of the song originated with him, even if just in the court of public opinion. Amid the catchy, hummable melodies and major chords, Lane shows us an entire universe of children’s music that, in our grown-up fatigue and irony, we may have overlooked.
In an interview with RogerEbert.com, Lane sat down to talk about approaching this subject with a fresh pair of eyes as a non-parent, finding the right subjects to tell the story of this underrecognized genre, and the obstacles it faces from both cultural apathy and corporate greed. (Not to mention what it’s like getting a dozen kids to try to sit down in a chair for a talking head interview.)
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re not a parent, right?
PENNY LANE: Correct, I’m a childless cat lady. [Laughs.]
So what led you to take this interest in children’s music and explore it?
PL: I essentially became aware of “Baby Shark,” and I don’t know if you’re also a childless cat lady, but I had literally never heard of it before, and it was the biggest song on the planet. Then one day, I found out it was the most-viewed YouTube video of all time, by a lot. It’s not a contest. And I became aware that a lot of my friends with toddler-aged kids, when you ask them about “Baby Shark,” tell me, “We don’t want our kid to find out about it, because it’s gonna ruin our lives.”
I was very interested in the fact that, one, there’s such a thing as toddler pop music, this specific world or genre. And two, that toddlers could exert such a strong preference in the marketplace that they could make “Baby Shark” a global phenomenon. I started looking into it, and I pitched The Ringer because they were putting together their second season of “Music Box,” and they told me to investigate. We had questions about whether “Baby Shark” warranted a feature, but it opened the door to a broader exploration of children’s music.
How did you land on expanding that to a broader swath of children’s entertainers? How did you find these subjects, specifically?
It could definitely have been a larger survey, but I found it overwhelming and not very artistically interesting. I just had the notion that I wanted it to be an ensemble, because I didn’t think there was one act that could encapsulate it. Then it became a question of finding the people: We considered anywhere from three to seven, but we ended up with five because I was starting from zero.
It was about reaching out to people, building our database and casting data, and having conversations with them. You know, my interviewing style is fun, interactive, and casual. I needed people who could vibe with my style and go deep with me if they could. I also knew we had archetypes we were trying to fill: We wanted someone like The Wiggles, who are a super international, global band. We knew we wanted someone like Johnny Only, a kind of regional act, because most people’s interactions with children’s music are at the regional, local level.
The guy at the birthday party.
Exactly, or who plays in the park every Saturday morning. We had these archetypes we were casting. We wanted someone who was just getting started in the field, which is how we found Divinity [Roxx], who is learning in real time how to crack the code of what works for toddlers. Then we slotted people in from there.
HBOYou mentioned this is your entrance into this world; how did that inform your perspective, given you were also a neophyte, learning in real time?
In the world we live in, I’m always trying to plant a little flag for the outsider as an artistic voice. I know there are many good, ethical reasons to ask people to speak from their own experience or community. And there are good arguments for that in my personal artistic ethos; I like to be an outsider looking in. I feel there’s extreme value in that. I gotta tell you, the parents I know who listen to this music do not share that value. It’s actually really similar to the Kenny G movie, in the sense that I didn’t have a dog in the race. I thought it was funny that severe jazz heads hated him so much. I didn’t get upset about it. But I understand the passions at play here.
It was similar to this; I could see the pain and suffering that some of this stuff was causing my parent friends—not just on the ‘ha-ha’ funny side, but the real agony they sometimes have to face. We even get into this later in the film, with what you do with your kids and screens, which extends to music, too, because that’s how a lot of kids interact with it. What you feed your children culturally is a really fraught topic.
What’s interesting about a lot of your other documentary subjects is that you have such curiosity about these people who buck the trends of conventional polite society. But Kenny G and these children’s entertainers are, in some ways, the beneficiaries of mainstream success, and you’re paradoxically sticking up for them, or explicating them from a broader, detached perspective.
Philip K. Dick says something along the lines of, “The symbols of the Divine initially show up in the trash stratum.” It’s the idea that the very stuff that shapes the reality of our culture is often beneath our notice or contempt. Kenny G was the soundtrack in the background. I grew up with that; no one ever wanted to talk about it, except to say they hated it. Then, with kids’ music, I feel like the only people interacting with it are tired parents who aren’t philosophizing deeply about why their child listens to that one Wiggles song 117 times in a row. They’re probably not in a position to, because they’re trying to figure out whether they’re really gonna let them listen to it that 118th time.
What’s interesting about the doc, too, is that, because of the different archetypes you talk to, there’s a deep curiosity about the form of children’s music and how it’s made. And, remarkably, you take it so seriously. These are crafted songs.
Oh my god, yes; it’s so hard! There are so many places in the film where the artists make a really strong case for this. You would think it’s so easy, play a couple of tunes, whatever. It’s true that kids like everything, in the sense that they’re not bound by genre, time period, or what’s cool. There’s a lot of stuff that’s open, which is really inspiring to me artistically. Kids don’t care about being cool. The minute they learn to be cool, their innocence ends. It’s a very sad day, you know, the first time they ever love a song, and someone at school tells them it’s lame. That’s the biggest heartbreak I could possibly imagine. Because for me, as an artist, I’m always trying to get back to that state of innocence, where you’re making from a state of pureness.
It’s really hard to make music for toddlers, and it’s especially hard to make music for toddlers that works in a live concert setting—keeping them engaged and understanding how to ride the waves of their attention. Some of these audience members are literally babies, so learning to put on a concert that works for that group is really challenging. The minute you imagine yourself doing it, you start to get a sense of how hard that might be. Imagine you’re in front of a group of three or four-year-olds. Go entertain them.
I’m now imagining a Wiggles version of Stop Making Sense.
That’s actually a good idea.
HBOSo in addition to the interviews, what else did you get? Did you film that concert footage? What was it like being in those spaces and seeing the children engaged?
It was just joyful! I dare you to go to a Wiggles concert and be in a bad mood. It’s really a joyful experience to watch little kids have this deep, meaningful relationship with music. It fills your soul with joy. It made me jealous of parents, but it also made me happy that I got to dive into it on my own terms and schedule, then go home to my quiet apartment. [Laughs.]
What was it like working with the kids in the interview segments? I do love the little documentary B-roll in-joke you make at the beginning, where they’re waiting for the room noise.
Yes, it’s so cute. I’m glad you caught my reference; I’m sure most people won’t. But it was meant to be a little documentary in-joke with the interview chair and the clapper. We did these expert interviews at a preschool, and we put a chair tehre, and we knew it was going to be cute chaos, but the cute chaos was way behind what I imagined. I wanted to make these kids the “experts” in this movie, and learning immediately after that these experts aren’t even going to sit in the chair, much less answer interview questions, was so beyond.
But I got a couple of little moments of the most amazing things. Near the end of the film, we asked the kid experts what they love about music. And one little boy said, “I like to sit next to my mom.” Every single time I hear that, I cry; look, I’m crying right now thinking about it. My cat is comforting me.
That’s the best imaginable answer to why someone loves music. We knew it would be a cute gag, but it also gave us a few little nuggets of wisdom. But it was also total chaos.
HBOInterestingly, you land in this very poptimist space, even though the project’s origin was “Baby Shark,” the closest thing to controversy in this David-and-Goliath story.
As you know, in all my movies, the conflict goes in the middle. There’s a thicket you have to move through, and here, the thicket includes the increasing use of AI to replace these artists whom you’ve gotten to know and grown to appreciate the value of what they do now. It’s the genres of art that we value the least—that we put the least stock in, we believe is the least hard ot make—that will be most quickly destroyed by it.
Another conflict is that children’s music, like all culture, is dominated by megacorporations with immense power. Good luck being an independent artist when you’re competing with literal Disney or Pinkfong, or fill in the blank. Then there’s just the eternal artist’s struggle of how to make a living with all these forces coming at you.
The Johnny Only/”Baby Shark” conflict was something we knew would be in the film from the beginning. It was lucky that Johnny was another archetype we were casting for: the regional artist. He’s never left upstate New York; he came to New York for the first time for the premiere. It was nice to introduce him as the regional guy, then drop the ridiculous surprise that he’s the architect of “Baby Shark.”
Speaking of archetypes, there’s also Divinity Roxx, who gives you the chance to talk about making children’s music for children of color.
For various reasons, children’s music was dominated by a folk-music tradition for much of the 20th century. Which makes sense, because a lot of those songs are sung around the campfire, and they’re summer camp songs, passed down generation to generation. You think of Pete Seeger, who was invested in making music for kids, or Ella Jenkins, a massive figure in the world.
So in the 21st century, seeing a real concerted effort to diversify not just who’s making the music, but also the styles being drawn upon, was great. Where’s the hip-hop for kids? Where’s the jazz for kids? Where’s the Latin music for kids? Etc. It’s out there, so we wanted to at least gesture toward the idea.
One of the things we’re doing with the film’s release is putting together a bunch of playlists in collaboration with the artists so that we can offer lullabies by Laurie Burkner, songs for the car trip from Casper Babypants, and new young artists in these diverse fields, like Divinity Roxx. Here’s some more exploration you can do after you see it.
HBOYou said you came into this world blind; by the end of the project, how did your relationship to children’s music change? Is there a tune that still gets stuck in your head?
Oh my God, they all do. The movie has 102 songs; we had to account for licensing and all that. But literally every one of them is an earworm. There are sections of the movie that are four earworms per minute, and every one of us on the team loved it. When you make a movie, you have to listen to this music over and over and over and over and over again. And it’s just very reliable: singing these songs will lift your mood. It sounds so corny, but engaging with this music felt like it truly healed some part of the child within me. I don’t even know how to say that without sounding like a total lame-o, but it made me feel whole.
The parents who have to listen to this music probably take it for granted, but I truly believe that it’s making them happier people inside, even if they don’t know it.
Yeah, Casper Babypants in the doc that he’s “free of the culture of cool,” which resonated with me.
I really don’t feel cool, and I’ve never succeeded by being cool. That’s a different lane in art. But I’m in my own lane. Chasing what’s cool or up or what’s in the zeitgeist has never been a thing I’ve done. Because I think trying to be cool is the most crippling thing on the planet; it really is. If you’re an artist trying to be cool, I don’t know how you’d pull it off. I honestly would not make it.
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