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It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a radio hit covered by a chorus of children must include some hilarious lyrical switch-ups. And nowhere is that more true than with one of KIDZ BOP’s latest offerings: their take on the summer smash “Good Luck, Babe!” by Chappell Roan.
A record label that remakes pop hits into family-friendly jams, KIDZ BOP’s take on the track about a Sapphic relationship gone awry because of one partner’s inability to come to terms with their queerness, was never going to be an easy sell to hit-lovin’ tykes. And the new version, which was uploaded to KIDZ BOP’s YouTube account just last week, features some wild rewrites.
As one X user pointed out in a viral post shortly after the song’s release, the song’s bridge was rewritten to include lyrics that sounded, in the parlance of TikTok, to be a bit about unaliving!
The song’s original lyrics are about Roan’s partner pretending to be heterosexual and regretting her choice of the straight lifestyle.
“When you wake up next to him in the middle of the night
With your head in your hands, you're nothing more than his wife”
Even though the lyrics are about a heterosexual sham marriage, KIDZ BOP felt the need to alter them into the much more harrowing:
“And when you wake up in your bed in the middle of the night
With your head in your hands, with nothing more in this life”
And while the bridge is what went viral, the song features some other out-of-left-field lyrical choices, including its rewrite of the now-iconic chorus.
Rather than saying:
“You can kiss a hundred boys in bars,
Shoot another shot, try to stop the feeling”
The KIDZ BOP kids croon:
“You can tell a hundred boys you’re smart
Travel 'round the world, try to stop the feeling”
And because they can’t repeat Roan’s quip about a “sexually explicit kind of love affair,” the KIDZ BOP version replaces that lyric with “perpetually confusing kind of love affair” which — is there any other?
While KIDZ BOP is making sure that any mentions of sexuality, or even marriage, are scrubbed from the song’s rousing chorus, verses, and bridge, “Good Luck, Babe!” — the original version — has become Roan’s biggest radio hit. It has become a mainstay in the Billboard Hot 100’s top 10 during the summer and fall seasons, and peaked at number 4.
And while KIDZ BOP may have taken one lyric and turned it into an unintentional depression bop, it turns out “Good Luck, Babe!” can actually save lives. Its beats-per-minute falls within the range of those recommended as the perfect range for performing CPR, according to the American Heart Association.
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