On Purpose

[From the Fall 2025 issue]

I joined an indie rock band when I was 15. For a decade, I made music for people who were about the same age as me. Then, at 25, I switched to almost exclusively making music for children. Many of you could tell a similar story. Why? I’ve thought a lot about this over the years: Why Children's Music? It could be a pragmatic choice for a musician to pivot to young listeners. Local events always need children’s entertainers, so the demand is ever present. Speaking from experience, it's easier to make a living in kindie than in indie.

But the switch to Children's Music has to be more than just a dollars-and-cents calculation. A person who writes kid's songs for the money probably doesn't write very good songs (and, to be honest, probably doesn't make much money either).

More fundamentally, then, why Children's Music? Why do we do this thing, from a deeper human and artistic perspective?

A few years ago, I put out the question on social media: What is the purpose of children’s music? Here are a few of the responses:

“To bring everyone back to joy and wonder and remind us that inside everyone is a sweet music-loving child.” Tune Bugz

“Create community and an inclusive environment with which to learn, share, grow, play.” Heather Feather

“To inspire.” Sonshine and Broccoli

“Kid's music has the same purpose as any music or art: entertain, inspire, connect to audiences, provide an outlet for creativity, help us understand ourselves and the beautiful complexity and simplicity of existence.” Mr. Elephant

“Elevate joy and open hearts." Emerald Sketch Art

“To reach something inside that little else can. Whether it's entertaining, educational, therapeutic.” Miss Lisas Musikids

For me, there are at least three things that are fundamentally special about writing music for children—three things that make the gig a distinct pleasure as well as real responsibility:

1. Family culture. We often meet fans who listen to our albums at home with their families, and they tell us about how our music is something that they share. It has become a part of their family culture. They sing, dance and laugh together. They get to have shared references, inside jokes. This, to me, is one of the most rewarding things about the job. We enter into this intimate space where families bond, and we even get to nourish the process.

2. Nostalgia seeds. How many times have you found yourself singing a song you learned in kindergarten? Songs we learn when we're young stick with us for life. As kindie artists, we write words that seep into the deep recesses of developing minds, words that might pop into their heads again decades from now. This is a privilege and a responsibility.

Being an adult is hard. When we conjure up tunes we loved when life was simpler, it can bring us back, if only momentarily, to a simpler time. These melodic touchstones might even help us cope with the struggles we face.

3. Modelling creativity. Many of us use music to teach, whether academic concepts or values like kindness or environmentalism. There is clear worth in this. But we are particularly well placed to teach creativity for it's own sake. Music teaches music; art inspires art. If we cultivate a love of music in our listeners, their lives will be enriched exponentially.

But we teach creativity in a more profound sense. When we sing about an aardvark prime minister or a peanut-butter-and-jellyfish sandwich, we're encouraging kids to think about the world in a different way. This could help foster unconventional thinking from an early age. Silliness is like an apprenticeship in creativity. Our world faces big problems, and the future needs people who can think differently to find solutions. Kids' music, with all its topsy-turvy silliness, could change the world.

Matt Robertshaw, editor