The kidz are alright: Inside the brightly hued, (slightly) surreal world of KIDZ BOP

The KIDZ BOP headquarters is light and breezy on a Tuesday afternoon, and the KIDZ (yes all caps, yes with Z) are fresh off taping a Good Morning New York segment.

The children’s ensemble, which has been rocking the airwaves since the early aughts, includes at any given time up to thirteen performers. I am only set to meet four, however, who are in the city doing press and performing a mini-concert in Central Park.

For a group of pre-teens, they are incredibly press-savvy. They speak in soundbites and any of that signature “don’t look at me I might die” sensibility typical of their age group is well hidden.

Who owns KIDZ BOP? Peak behind the curtain of this tween pop machine.

Child stars in the making

“We’ve been in KIDZ BOP for only a couple of months now and we all, over the past few months, have created a really strong bond and friendship,” Jackson, a thirteen-year-old California native, tells me. He started dancing at four, and his musical interests grew.

Sporting a black and neon pink windbreaker with a stripe of silver, Jackson matches notes on two of the other KIDZ outfits. The moon-man silver is also seen on 12-year-old Shila’s dress and 13-year-old Kiya’s slouchy cargo pants.

Their fits look straight out of Disney Channel’s costume department ? an unintentional homage perhaps to the brand’s greatest success stories. Several notable Disney Channel stars (read: Zendaya and Ross Lynch) were originally KIDZ BOP kids. Also among the talent factory's other elite graduates? Becky G and Olivia Holt.

There’s a certain reverence among the group for the child stars that came before. All four performers were giddy about a recent TikTok they had shot with the Jonas Brothers and Kiya gushed about Miley Cyrus, whom she says she loves both as Hannah Montana and as herself.

These kids may not yet be household names individually, but under the KIDZ BOP umbrella, they are responsible for on average over 1 billion streams each year, not to mention concert ticket and album sales. It’s a heavy lift for (relatively) small shoulders.

“My life has changed a lot,” Shila says about the transition to semi-stardom, admitting it was hard saying goodbye to friends and family to make the move to Los Angeles, but “It’s a really good opportunity.”

“There are busy days, but we have to get those rehearsal times in for tour” Kiya pipes in. The kids are home-schooled, getting instruction from teachers who travel with them or stay in LA when they are recording. With the shift away from a CD-centric model, the label pumps out nearly one single a week, sometimes with an accompanying music video.

Squeaky clean music machine

If you’re not familiar, the group’s signature is covers of top forty hits that are censored to be “family friendly.” One of their recent hits was “About That Time” a take on Lizzo’s 2022 summer smash “About Damn Time.”

Among the song's changed lyrics are "I'ma need some more pop in my cup," transformed from the original "I'm a need like two shots in my cup."

The lyrics are rewritten by the KIDZ BOP music team which pulls the already cleaned-up radio versions. “They’re usually really popular songs at the time so you hear them anyway, but you go over them a lot,” Tyler, the only non-silver sporting member of the group tells me about the lyric changes. He’s 13, and an avid Usher fan.

All four say they have been performing since they were very young – and it shows.

At the concert, a day later, the pre-teens perform a 30-minute set for a crowd of well-dressed toddlers and their parents. It includes a medley from Beyoncé's new album "Renaissance," no doubt a particularly heavy lift for the censorship department, and a few other pop hits.

KIDZ BOP, live and in-person

The concert, put on in collaboration with Spotify, is all fancy footwork and exaggerated gestures. This time dressed in a green theme, the kids have the tone and skill of seasoned children’s performers. They work the crowd expertly, instructing the various four and five-year-olds to get on their feet and sing along.

“This song is our favorite,” Kiya says, before launching into a performance of Megan Trainor’s “Made You Look.” The number already has a bubble gum pop flavor, which lends it easily to the KIDZ BOP treatment.

After the show, they sign autographs for eager fans but are anxious to hit the cotton candy booth, one of their handlers tells me. It’s this tidbit that reminds me of a moment from our earlier interview.

Asked which musical artist they would most want to collaborate with, both Jackson and Kiya cited Harry Styles. When the boy-bander-turned-international-sensation came up Kiya tripped over her words a bit and put her hands to her mouth in excitement. It broke the fourth wall.

In some ways, the KIDZ are quite abnormal, dressed in matching futuristic garb and headed out on a national tour to sing squeaky clean versions of some fairly explicit songs. But, in other ways, they’re just your average tweenagers – bashful about a celebrity crush, eager to over-indulge in sugar, and doing their best to manage the difficult task of growing up.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Who are the KIDZ BOP kids? They're still figuring that out.