From the mouths of babes

I don’t know why exactly, but the sound of children singing on pop records fills me with angsty dread. It’s not that I dislike kids in any way or have anything against young people raising their voices in song. It’s not some repressed childhood memory thing either – embarrassing revelation coming up – I actually rather enjoyed being part of the school choir; not that it did anything for my credibility or popularity at the time though, and we once absolutely butchered Bohemian Rhapsody.

I raise this issue now as Swedish singer Lykke Li releases another frustratingly catchy single ‘Breaking It Up’. On previous tracks ‘Little Bit’ and ‘I’m Good, I’m Gone,’ the potentially irritating bubblegum tunes were made irresistible by her enticing voice, sweet and innocent yet so sexual and aware that a few notes were enough to conjure the mental image of her legs wrapped firmly around you. But on ‘Breaking It Up’ all that is replaced with the incessant whining of (at least what sounds like) a gang of twelve-year-old girls. The fantasies vanish in seconds and my hand rushes for the stop button. Listener’s droop. When it comes to pop songs, there’s just something about the high-pitched unison of a children’s chorus that seems inherently out of place.

For the last 50 years, from rock’n’roll to hip-hop, pop music has been the cultural representation of teenage rebellion, of fighting against the system and breaking free from authority. Sex, drugs and occasional political diatribes were the themes and guitars and turntables were the means. Of course the reality of the music industry production line is most often a world away from this romanticised image; but in my mind, the sound of a harmonised troupe of young people, trained and disciplined by their elders, is the opposite of pop’s symbolic freedom.

I fear I’ll always have this immediate aversion to the sound of children on record. It was a stroke of genius to for Pink Floyd to invert the common connotations of the choir by getting a bunch of cockney schoolkids to coarsely holler “We don’t need no, educayshun!” Yet I still can’t help but cringe when their prepubescent voices emerge from my speakers. Maybe attending one too many recitals has forever burnt the associations of Andrew Lloyd Webber medleys into my brain.

Ironically, my own choir carried out a miniature rebellion by refusing to sing Another Brick in the Wall at the suggestion of one long-haired prog fan. Perhaps even then I knew that four part arrangements of unbroken voices just weren’t meant for rock and roll.

Top five songs to shudder to when the kids’ voices kick in:

Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) – Pink Floyd

Dirty Harry – Gorillaz

You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones

Never Forget – Take That

The Lost Children – Michael Jackson This slightly obscure album track from 2001’s Invincible is especially unnerving because you don’t know how many of the kids on the record might have spent the night at Neverland.