Abstract
Whilst the creative handling of recording technology has played a major role in the development of popular music, there has been little research into the role of production in music promoted explicitly for a child audience. The term “tween” is most often applied to describe children just before they become teens, referring to children aged 9–12 years. In more recent years, however, the tween category has come to comprise children as young as 4 and up to 15 years of age. Based on the premise that there is a growing tendency for children to be “youthified” at a far younger age than occurred previously, I am keen to investigate the extent to which music plays a part in this process. Through close readings of three songs from different eras in the history of children’s music, I will explore the role of sonic markers as narrative strategies in children’s music. The overall aim is to discuss the extent to which the relationships between lyrical content, vocal performance, and production aesthetics may play a role in the youthification of child performers and audiences.
Highlights
Throughout recording history, the sonic effect of different technologies and instruments has left a lasting impression on recordings, suggesting an almost intrinsic relationship between sound and period
Producers and engineers, especially within the realm of popular music, have taken compositional advantage of this relationship, constructing what I have elsewhere labeled sonic markers, or “musical codes that have been historically grounded through a specific context, and that, through their appropriation, serve a range of narrative purposes in recorded music” (Askerøi, 2013, p.17)
In this article I will examine the extent to which sonic markers may serve as narrative strategies in the increasing “youthification” of children, both for protagonists and consumers
Summary
Throughout recording history, the sonic effect of different technologies and instruments has left a lasting impression on recordings, suggesting an almost intrinsic relationship between sound and period. The narrative of the “real”: when sonic markers function as strategies for authenticating child personae in order to bridge the gap between music for children and music for adolescents As examples of these strategies, I have chosen three songs that are well known to child audiences in Norway and can serve as detailed spot checks of the two latter time periods. For Latham, youthification describes a desire for eternal youth—a desire propelled by commercial products that includes young children as well as adult In this sense, it could be regarded in close relation to a gradually expanding “tween” category, earlier associated with an age group from 9 to 12 years of age. Initially intended to mobilize a sense of closeness between Prøysen and his listeners, vocal performance and piano accompaniment become sonic markers in a narrative of distance for the little boy
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