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Dolly Parton
Available now digitally and on October 13 in stores, "I Believe In You" is the country legend's foray into the world of children's music. The proceeds of the release -- a 14-song lineup for the young and young-at-heart -- will go towards the singer's Imagination Library in Sevierville, Tennessee, a multinational service that brings reading material to children each month.
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Barenaked Ladies
last.fm
Barenaked Ladies dove into the world of children's music in 2008, releasing the kid-friendly full-length Snacktime! (Pub Trivia Note: Snacktime! was the last album that BNL recorded with Steven Page still in the group.) The album includes songs like "Louis Loon" and "Raisins". There's even a portion of the album set aside where kids and celebrities (like Janeane Garofalo, Lyle Lovett and David Suzuki) call in to tell the listener what their favourite snack is. Snacktime! also earned BNL an honour that's been bestowed upon such children's music luminaries as Fred Penner, Raffi and Al Simmons: a Juno Award for Children's Album of the Year.
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They Might Be Giants
Amazon
For a lot of kids, discovering quirk-pop titans They Might Be Giants is a rite of school passage. (Heck, it's borderline mandatory for the kids that make up the school's improv comedy troupe.) These days, kids are getting their TMBG fix earlier and earlier in life. They Might Be Giants put out four super-successful children's albums in the '00s, covering topics like the alphabet (Here Come the ABCs), numbers (Here Come the 123s) and science (Here Comes Science).
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Jewel
Amazon
Need to get a child to sleep, but don't have a copy of Jewel's 'A Night Without Armor' within arm's reach? Give 'Lullaby' a shot. Released on Fisher-Price Records (home of Slipknot and Tyler the Creator), Lullaby features Jewel singing lullabies and nursery rhymes aimed at soothing infants into a slumber. Two years later, Jewel came back with a new children's album entitled 'The Merry Goes Round'.
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Lisa Loeb
hollywoodhotmoms.com
Lisa Loeb's a busy lady. In addition to her main gig of knocking out singer/songwriter-style pop, Loeb has tackled such pursuits as reality TV stardom (the most talked-about bit from her VH1 series is not exactly kid-friendly), eyewear design and a side-gig putting out music for rugrats. The "Stay" singer teamed with her college pal Elizabeth Mitchell (no children's music slouch in her own right) in 2003 to put out 'Catch the Moon'. Loeb returned to the world of kid's music in 2008 with 'Camp Lisa' and again in 2011 with the songbook 'Lisa Loeb's Silly Sing-Along: The Disappointing Pancake and Other Zany Songs'.
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André 3000
jukebox.es
Andre 3000's musical output has been pretty sparse in the past decade, but the Outkast rapper did create a lot of music for his Cartoon Network series "Class of 3000". On the show, Andre played music teacher/recording artist Sunny Bridges, a man who's passionate about music and his community. The songs from the show eventually came out as a tidily packaged soundtrack album, giving kids and their parents the opportunity to listen to tracks like "Fight the Blob" and "UFO Ninja" whenever the mood strikes.
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Johnny Cash
coveralia.com
Presumably not recorded in Folsom Prison, 'The Johnny Cash Children's Album' is exactly as advertised. The Man in Black sings songs about things like dinosaurs and magic glasses, aiming his focus square on little listeners, but still charming older ones as well. Interestingly enough, the Johnny Cash hit "A Boy Named Sue" (a song with lyrics about a vicious brawl and featuring the words "son of a b****") was written by beloved children's author Shel Silverstein.
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John Denver
wikia.com
You can't go wrong with trains, can you? (Especially if you're marketing towards children, weirdos or old-timey mustachioed villains.) In 1997, John Denver released a kids album jam-packed with train-themed ditties entitled 'All Aboard'. Songs like "People Get Ready" (made famous by The Impressions) and "City of New Orleans" (a Steve Goodman song that was a hit for Willie Nelson) were reinterpreted by the smiley folkie and geared towards an audience of young'uns. This full-length was sadly Denver's last. He passed away in a plane crash later that year.
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Anne Murray
polyvore.com
Like a lot of the artists on this list, it's not like you have to tweak an Anne Murray album to make it kid-friendly. We suppose maybe if a snowbird murdered Dad there might be a need for it, but that's an extreme circumstance. Anne put out a kids-focused LP in 1977 ('There's a Hippo in My Tub') and the album wound up collecting the Juno Award for Best Children's Album. The effort includes such tot-friendly songs as "Teddy Bears Picnic" and "You Are My Sunshine."
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Devo
last.fm
Hats off to New Wave pioneers Devo for turning a Disney-endorsed kids project into something that can be read as a sly extension of the group's devolution concept. In the mid '00s, 'Devo 2.0' was formed and featured child actors (including the girl that would go on to play Foxface in "The Hunger Games") playing an all-kid version of the band. Some of the members of Devo 1.0 played the instruments, but the kids were the face of this Walt Disney Records venture. On the band's only album, Devo classics like "Girl U Want" and "Freedom of Choice" were reworked to be family-friendly fare. (No, "Mongoloid" was not one of the songs to get the Devo 2.0 treatment.)
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The New Amsterdams
AllMusic
Kansas indie outfit The New Amsterdams (featuring Matt Pryor, best known for fronting emo vets The Get Up Kids) pulled double duty during the aughts, releasing a pair of children's albums under the winky name, The Terrible Twos. 2007's 'If You Ever See an Owl...' even came accompanied by an illustrated storybook. Some sample Terrible Twos song titles include "We Can All Get Along With Dinosaurs," "Math Stomp" and something called "Great Big Poop."
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The Verve Pipe
AllMusic
Full points to post-grunge one-hit wonders The Verve Pipe for successfully making the leap from dorm rooms in the '90s to nurseries in the 2010s. The Michigan rockers have knocked out two well-received kids albums: 2009's 'A Family Album' and 2013's 'Are We There Yet?' Some of the song titles on the latest effort include "I Didn't Get My Note Signed", "When Grandma Says No" and "Homework Blues Stomp." From what we can tell, kids songs with the word "Stomp" in the title are quite the hot commodity.
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Robert Schneider
last.fm
When Robert Schneider of Apples in Stereo fame feels like putting out a children's album, he does so under the name Robbert Bobbert. In 2009, the Elephant 6 co-founder put out a rugrat-friendly album called 'Robbert Bobbert & The Bubble Machine'. Sadly, this release did not lead to a series of kids albums from Neutral Milk Hotel, The Olivia Tremor Control or of Montreal. Oh well.
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