Recently in Children's Category

In an age ruled by Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers, it's easy to forget that so much tween-pop thrives, as it always has in the Radio Disney era, well below the radar. A lot never even crosses over into Top 40 mass culture: Just ask Hope Partlow or Skye Sweetnam or Brie Larson or Jordan Pruitt or Meg & Dia or Sara Paxton or Sofia Loell or Rose Falcon (all of whom have released very-good-to-great music this decade) if you doubt me. So listening to the new soundtracks to the Nickelodeon TV series iCarly and the Warner Premiere direct-to-DVD release Another Cinderella Story, I'm tempted to tell you to remember the names Miranda Cosgrove and Selena Gomez. Then again, maybe you'll never hear them again.

by Chuck Eddy

I’m not the first person to point out that Jonas Brothers and New Kids on the Block have stuff in common. I was going to be the first, but then Dave DiMartino went and revealed on his Yahoo blog last week that both ensembles are “male, human, English-speaking, preferred largely by a young female audience, fantastic entertainers, and equally enjoyable in their upbeat video romps! Similarly, were they both to be mysteriously teleported into deep space, they would -- as air-breathers -- instantly suffocate!” He left out something, though - namely, that both groups have halfway decent melodic rock ballads called “Tonight”! And that therefore, even as we speak, moms and daughters across the nation are fighting over which one is better!

by Chuck Eddy

So if Disney’s Jonas Brothers (whose next album is said to be inspired by the Animals, Young Rascals and Elvis Costello by the way) are the Beatles, would that make Nickelodeon’s Naked Brothers Band the Monkees? (Which would in turn make Hanson, um - Buddy Holly and the Crickets, I guess?) Okay, perhaps that analogy doesn’t hold water. Nonetheless, judging from the Nakeds’ new album, it might be time to start taking them seriously.

by Chuck Eddy

So I caught 17-year-old New Orleans fiddle prodigy and redheaded potential pop star Amanda Shaw at B.B. King Blues Club in Manhattan last week, playing for a bar full of bridge-and-tunnel Bo Bice fans, more than a few of them wearing mullets, mostly middle-aged couples seated at tables. Weird for me -- the last concert I saw there, by Swedish gloom-metal band Katatonia, sure wasn't a sit-down show -- and weird for Amanda. She and her backing trio the Cute Guys (all of whom clearly have a few decades on her, much of those years spent playing all the rootswise-and-otherwise genres they're now incorporating into her music) are used to people dancing -- doing cajun two-steps, Amanda and her longtime drummer Mike Barras told me backstage after their set, even when they cover the Clash.

by Sarah Bardeen

Okay, we know that "best children's music" might sound like a bit of an oxymoron. But children's music is undergoing a renovation these days, and it's time we celebrated it! Things started changing when former Del Fuego Dan Zanes made a pact with the devil, erm, that is, Disney and brought his literate, inter-generational folk to a wider audience. The process of kids music-hippification was furthered along by the wonderful For the Kids compilation series, which has brought the music of Jolie Holland, Tom Waits and Robyn Hitchcock to the pint-sized set. And we can't leave out They Might Be Giants, whose Here Come the ABC marked the band's tacit acknowledgement of their natural fan demographic.

But what about the best albums of 2007, you ask. Well, for starters, did you know that Andre 3000, the wild child of hip-hop duo Outkast, released a children's album?