By Jeff Vrabel
Special to The Washington Post
Pro tip for aspiring PR executives: If you’re ever announcing a Beyoncé-themed baby product, try to do so just days before she Instagrams her pregnancy.
Such was the most recent stroke of good news in the potent, enduring tale of the Rockabye Baby series, which for 11 years and 78 albums has tried to mitigate one of the worst parts of being a parent — the music — with lullabied instrumental covers of songs from, you know, real bands.
The Beyoncé version is the latest in a list that includes Prince, the Beatles, Springsteen, the Pixies, David Bowie, Eminem, the Cure, Guns N’ Roses, Rush, Kanye West, Radiohead, Adele, Cyndi Lauper, Tool and Iron Maiden. (If you think you had a weird day at work, imagine trying to coax “The Number of the Beast” out of a harp and glockenspiel.)
In its field, the Rockabye Baby series has carved out a “Weird Al”-esque dominance: 1.6 million units sold, 1.8 million single-track downloads and 130 million streams, although, to be fair, some of those might be from parents who have totally nodded off. Rockabye’s wares — branded by a decade-old design template and teddy bear mascot — are prominent in boutiques and baby shops nationwide.
“The obvious audience is the parent-slash-music-fan who has a sense of irony,” said Lisa Roth, executive producer of the series. “The musical palette is for the baby, but the packaging and homage to the artist is for the adults.”
The Beyoncé installment, released Feb. 24 and produced and performed by Andrew Bissell, includes definitive marimba-and-glockenspiel versions of “Hold Up,” “Sorry,” “Drunk in Love” and other songs that would get pretty much anyone fired from a day care. That said, it’s fairly shocking how well the melody of “Single Ladies” translates to bells and a xylophone.
Roth said that’s the sweet spot — the intersection between irony and rebellion, pre-baby rage with post-baby softness, the desire to raise thoughtful, fulfilled children with the reluctance to commit oneself entirely to bottle warmers and baggies of Goldfish.
“When you’re a parent, there’s a part of you that gets put on the back burner,” she said. “I like to think we’re a little bridge between the person you were pre-baby and the person you think you have to become post-baby.”
The Beyoncé lullaby record wasn’t pegged to the queen’s pregnancy — Roth found out about it on Instagram, just like all of us. And Beyoncé would have gotten a lot of attention anyway. “It was just super-with-a-cherry-on-top lucky,” Roth said. Pitchfork and Okayplayer blogged positively about the fetus-appropriate version of “Single Ladies;” NPR premiered “Hold Up” online.
“So much of the kid-friendly music out there is super commercial or obnoxiously saccharine and painfully grating,” said Robin Hilton of NPR’s “All Songs Considered.” “But these tinkling little instrumentals are oddly comforting. A large part of the appeal is the simple novelty of it all. But these are also really deftly arranged. They stand on their own. They also tap into the kinds of bands parents today would have listened to growing up, so there’s a real nostalgia factor.”
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