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When Rhapsody learned that Disney was about to release a tribute album of modern jazz gems from their celebrated songbook, we jumped at the chance of having a pre-release listening party. That was before our jazz editor, yours truly, actually heard that album and got really excited. This svelte set is  a whole lot of fun.

With Everybody Wants to Be a Cat (Vol. 1 in their jazz series), instead of playing it safe Disney went with the most exciting newer names around and anchored them with a legend — Dave Brubeck, who was a mere tyke of 90 at recording time. So, before reading on, I suggest you start playing this surprisingly suave jazz collection immediately. This is that rare project that should delight parents, kids and blissfully untethered jazz cats of all ages.

Sesame Street launched in 1969, back when New York was still trash-strewn and poor people actually lived there (yes, pre-Giuliani) — and when it was still revolutionary to show children of all races playing together on TV. The world has changed a lot since then, and many shows have intervened to loosen the Street's hold on the ratings, but to this day, nothing holds a candle to it for sheer inventiveness. A lot of that inventiveness streamed from Jim Henson, whose puppets initially merited just short skits but quickly came to occupy the show's center stage. Henson's brand of humor infiltrated the entire show; when you remember classic skits, chances are they involved puppets. Remember the Yip-Yip Martians? ("Yip, yip, yiiip. Nope, nope, nope.") Guy Smiley interviewing a loaf of bread? Kermit reporting at the scene of Humpty Dumpty's fall? We thought so.

But music has always been a huge part of Sesame Street's appeal, and its songwriters were big fans of Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville (some had actually been vaudeville performers in their youth). Sesame Street has also managed to pull down the biggest stars of every era, from Stevie Wonder to the recent ill-fated non-appearance by Katy Perry. (If you haven't seen Feist on the show, drop what you're doing and watch this now.)

As the Sesame Street catalog has finally become available digitally, we salute 40-plus years of the Street with a playlist of iconic Sesame Street songs, another playlist featuring awesome guest appearances (Stevie Wonder and Johnny Cash, among so many wonderful others), and a rundown of our five favorite characters and their significant musical moments. Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away — let's always be on our way to where the air is clean. In case you forgot, let Rhapsody remind you how to get to Sesame Street.

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?