Kidz Bop, Vol. 3

Kidz Bop, Vol. 3 collects more remakes of current pop hits with a group of kids singing along on the choruses. As with the previous Kidz Bop volumes, this approach offers as many moments of surreality as it does whimsical fun; hearing children sing along to lyrics like "Soak Up the Sun"'s "My friend the communist/holds meetings in his RV" doesn't really make the songs more kid-friendly, and on songs like "Hey Baby" it gets irritating quickly. Not surprisingly, the covers of more youthful artists' songs are among the best; Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" and Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" are the closest this collection comes to appropriate singalongs for kids. Even with the rise of young pop singers that don't try look or sound several times their age, the current pop music scene just doesn't feature that many songs that work with kids' voices; the versions of "Alive," "Dilemma," "Happy," and "Hero" included here are cases in point. For the most part, the original versions of these songs aren't especially racy, and all of them sound better than these covers, but families who want a relatively hip collection of music to listen to could do worse than this album.