The things about the long-running Kidz Bop series is, well, it’s for the kids. So the team behind the more than 70+ album series often go in and do a bit of clean-up on artists’ more salacious or adult-themed lyrics.
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That’s how Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe!” line “kiss a hundred boys in bars” got morphed into “show a hundred boys you’re smart.” Basically the same, right?
Now it’s Noah Kahan‘s turn. The “Stick Season” singer reacted to a fan account that noticed a tweak to the title track of his fourth album, The Great Divide. The song got bopped on the G-rated remake that appeared on last month’s Kidz Bop 53, with Kahan writing in an X post on Monday (June 15) that it was “Such a specific choice.”
“I can’t recall the last time we talked about anything but lookin’ out for cops,” was cleaned up to “I can’t recall the last time we talked about anything but hanging with the cops.” The next line of the opening verse — “We got cigarette burns in the same side of our hands, we ain’t friends” — got transformed into the more anodyne “We got the same rug burns on the same side of our hands.”
The “morons” in that line got a makeover into “just two kids,” while a lyric about him being “high enough to still care if I die,” became “I’m smart enough to still care if I try.” And you better believe that bit where he sings “You said, ‘F–k off,’ and I said nothin’ for a while,” was sanitized to “You said ‘get lost’ and I said nothin’ for a while.” Similarly, a second verse lyric about becoming aware of how “s–ty and unfair” it was to act like everything was fine was cleaned up to “petty and unfair,” while a reference to shooting birds who can’t sing became the less violent “they only cage the birds who cannot sing.”
It’s not Kahan’s first Bopping. His breakthrough 2022 “Stick Season” single was brushed up in 2024, switching a line about memories being something “even smokin’ weed” can’t replace to something “even my TV does not replace.”
The Great Divide became Kahan’s first LP to hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and the title track has run up to No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 after all 21 songs from the deluxe version charted on the singles tally after the album’s April 24 release. Kahan is hitting the road in support of the album, with the singer slated to play Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia on June 26 with Gigi Perez and Anabelle Dinda opening.
