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Bluey: Rug Island bows atop Billboard’s Kid Albums chart (dated Nov. 9), powered by vinyl sales of the set. The soundtrack was released Oct. 25 and is the companion to the hit animated series Bluey. The project includes music from all three seasons of the show, which premiered in 2018. In the United States, Bluey […]
Guitarist, keyboardist, singer and songwriter Coy Bowles has been part of the Zac Brown Band since 2007, co-writing hits including “Colder Weather” and “Knee Deep” and earning a trio of Grammy wins along the way.
But when he’s not lighting up stages with ZBB’s signature freewheeling, jam-band vibe, Bowles is crafting music for another audience: kids.
In 2020, Bowles released his first children’s album, Music for Tiny Humans. On Friday, he released a follow-up called Up and Up, crafting the album’s 13 kid-aimed songs with collaborator Carlos Sosa, who has also toured with Zac Brown Band.
The album features songs such as “Dance, Dance, Dance,” “I’m Hungry,” “See the World in Color” and “The Clean Up Song,” the latter of which was inspired by a friend of his who was tired of hearing the same song sung over and over when it was time for kids to clean up in the classroom. At the same time, Bowles and Sosa had been speaking about the 1987 Run-D.M.C. classic “It’s Tricky,” admiring its production and how modern and catchy the song is, nearly four decades after its release. Bowles wanted to write kids’ music that sounded modern and in line sonically with some of the melodies and beats kids are hearing around them. He also wanted to shy away from what he calls “toxic positivity.”
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“These songs aren’t always just sunshine every day,” he tells Billboard. “The song ‘How Do You Feel’ is about doing tough things. It’s not toxic positivity. There’s real songs about ‘I miss my mom’ or ‘I’m pretty sad right now, but I know things will change and we all go through things.’”
The album also has plenty of moments of levity, such as “I’m Hungry,” inspired by Bowles’ daughters, Hattie and Millie.
“They would come down and listen to a song and be like, ‘Dad, I love it. I’m hungry,’” Bowles recalls. “I’d give ‘em some food, we’d work on a song more, and they’d come down later, listen to it and say, ‘Oh, it’s even better now. Dad, I’m hungry.’ Then Carlos would be like, ‘Dude, is that all they ever say?’ So we started making kids’ voices and saying, ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry.’ And he looked at me and was like, ‘Dude, that’s really good actually.’ So he and I, being a place where there’s not a lot of rules and regulations when we’re writing this stuff and humor can be part of it, it just turned into this cool, funny song about being hungry. So the kids had a lot to do with it and influenced the direction.”
Bowles’ albums Up and Up and Music for Tiny Humans extend his creative work in writing and releasing children’s books since 2012, when he released the book Amy Giggles, Laugh Out Loud, based on the story of a friend who was bullied for her laugh as a child.
“I wrote songs my whole life. I got to a place where I was on a tour bus with 12 people and you really can’t write songs by yourself — there’s no corner to go write in,” he says. “There’s always someone around, so I just started writing anything that popped into my head. I started writing short stories and jotting down stuff that was happening with the band in a journal. It felt like it was keeping me healthy, mentally and creatively. Zac [Brown] had three kids at the time, and I showed him a few things I wrote. He said, ‘That would make a great children’s book. I have three kids and we’re reading books constantly.’”
Amy Giggles, Laugh Out Loud resonated with readers. “It started connecting with teachers because of the anti-bullying sentiment. I had no kids at the time, and I didn’t know many teachers at the time as far as early education, but I started getting Facebook posts about them having ‘Amy Giggles Day’ in their classrooms and kids dressing up like Amy Giggles. I started connecting with teachers to create content for their classrooms and it expanded from there.”
Since then, he’s released books including When You’re Feeling Sick, Will Powers: Where There’s a Will There’s a Way, and Behind the Little Red Door. Bowles has even done some public speaking to encourage teachers.
“Almost everybody who’s successful in life, they have somebody who cared about them. And some people, the only person in their life who’s sheltering them and guiding them with love is their teacher,” he says. “I think that they’re overlooked sometimes, and I want to make it my life’s purpose to shine light on teachers and let them know how important they are to our society as of now and the future.”
Bowles has always been connected to the education system — he was a guitar and vocal instructor for eight years — but over the past five years, he’s been actively providing content that parents and educators can use at home and in their classrooms, including a social-emotional learning kit with Lakeshore Learning that incorporated songs from his first children’s album.
“That’s been successful and is in a lot of classrooms, so we decided to make another with Lakeshore, and the music we were writing for Up and Up is part of that. We were talking with teachers and they said they would love to have transition songs, songs that signal different parts of the day. We have a song about washing hands, a song about leaving school to go home. But so many people who do that try to make it very on the nose, and we tried not to do that.”
He’s deepened his focus on offering music and content for kids through his company called CoyCo (Creative Opportunity Yields Creative Output), offering a range of products including worksheets, the Lakeshore Learning Kits that focus on topics including social-emotional learning, language and literacy, and his previously released books.
“My goal is to be one of the nimblest companies, hopefully creating content that’s viable for what teachers are going through,” Bowles says. “Because we self-publish, there’s not a lot of red tape. If I sit down with teachers and they are like, ‘We are seeing difficulty with mental health right now,’ a few months later I can have a book and some songs and videos ready to be played in the classroom or at home. My goal is to be a leading content creator in the education space and in the kids space.”
Ariana Grande followed the yellow brick carpet, instead of the red carpet, on the way to the Nov. 3 premiere of Wicked in Sydney, Australia. Celebrating her role of Glinda, the pop star and actress aptly dressed in a pink gown that looks straight out of Oz — though it’s actually custom Vivienne Westwood. With […]
The Billboard Family Hits of the Week compiles what’s new and worth your family’s time in music, movies, TV, books, games and more. Forget the mind-numbing scrolling and searching “what to watch for family movie night” … again. The best in family entertainment each week is all in one place, in this handy guide. Isn’t it satisfying to […]
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
As the holiday season approaches, it’s a great time to start thinking about gifts for your little ones. If you want to inspire their creativity and love for music, we’ve put together a list of the top 10 musical instrument toys that are sure to keep your kids entertained.
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Whether your child is a fan of Olivia Rodrigo, Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa or Taylor Swift, these toy instruments can motivate them to explore their musical interests one instrument at a time, whether it’s playing the piano, trumpet, accordion or a karaoke set for young aspiring singers.
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This kid-friendly roundup of children’s instruments features a diverse array of options, including a piano, guitar, xylophone, drum sets, a mini karaoke set, accordion, tambourine and maraca set. These fun selections can help empower your child to experiment with different sounds and build a foundation for an appreciation of music. This list includes options for children of all ages, so you’ll be sure to find something for everyone.
Keep scrolling down to shop one or more of your favorite musical toys for your child this holiday season.
Walmart
Bigfun Kid Keyboard, 37 Key Portable Electronic Piano Keyboard
$19.99
$69.99
71% off
Does your kid love the piano? Consider this best-selling electronic piano keyboard. It includes 37 keys with a microphone, and it’s a great gifts for kids ages 2 to 6, according to the brand.
Walmart
Best Choice Products 19-inch Kids in Flash Guitar, Pretend Play Musical Instrument Toy for Toddlers With Mic Stand
$24.99
$49.99
50% off
For kids who want to channel their inner-pop star, there’s this 19-inch kids flash guitar that comes with a mic stand. This is a great way to play dress-up with your kids as well.
Amazon
Miniartis Glockenspiel Xylophone | 25 Note Colorful Metal Keys Xylophone for Kids | Percussion Musical Instrument | Includes Music Songbook with 20 Songs, Blue Carry Case
Have fun with your kids with this colorful xylophone by producing bright and melodic tones that inspire creativity and musical exploration. Plus, it comes with a music songbook with 20 songs and a blue carry case.
Target
Costway Kids Drum Set Educational Percussion Musical Instrument Toy With Bass Drum
$61.99
$109.99
44% off
Go all out with your gift and add this exciting drum set to your child’s collection. This drum set includes a cymbal, five drums, two drumsticks and a foot pedal.
Amazon
YLL Mini Karaoke Machine for Kids, Portable Bluetooth Speaker with 2 Wireless Microphones, Year Old Party Family School
If you’re looking for a mini karaoke machine for your kids, this one is cute and convenient. The set includes LED lights and magic voices, including, monster voice, female voice, baby voice, male voice and original voice, and has a handle so your kid can take it on the go.
Amazon
3 Piece Tambourine & Maracas Set
Shake it off and get the party started with this three-piece tambourine and maracas set. This handheld tambourine includes five bells, so you’ll be ready to sing all the Christmas carols with your family and friends.
Target
B. Toys Drum Set, 7 Instruments
If you’re looking for an alternative kid-friendly toy drum set, you could add this toy drum set to your shopping list. This musical instrument set includes a drum, two drumsticks, bells, tambourines, a maraca and a shaker. Its compact size and portable features makes it easy to take with you wherever you go.
Target
Hey Play Kids Accordion with 10 Key Buttons
Spice up your musical instrument collection with this playful accordion. This accordion has a range of two octaves in the key of C major. It also includes three air valve keys and seven button keys for playing.
Amazon
Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood Musical Instruments 7-Piece Play Set
Is your toddler a fan of the PBS Kids animated series Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood? If so, this seven-piece set could be a perfect fit. The set includes a drum, two drum sticks, two maracas, a trumpet and a tambourine featuring beloved characters from the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood spin-off series.
Amazon
Quercetti Saxoflute – 16 Piece Build Your Own Instrument Set
Build your own Saxoflute with this 16-piece set. This 2-in-1 gift not only lets you put it together, but also serves as a fun musical instrument toy for kids.
Give the gift of music to your child and open up a world of creativity and joy. Keep in mind, exploring different instruments can spark their imagination and ignite a passion for music in the long run. Consider adding a variety of fun instruments to your gift list to add unique sounds and opportunities for learning.
Whether they’re jamming with friends or playing solo, these toy instruments can provide entertainment and discovery. Buy one or more of these instruments and get ready to embark on your child’s musical journey.
For more child-centered content, check out Billboard Family.
When Taylor Swift plays Indianapolis for the ninth time in her career this weekend – performing three sold-out Eras Tour dates at the 70,000-capacity Lucas Oil Stadium – she’s returning at the very top of her game.
And Indy knows games. After all, the Midwestern capital city has hosted the Super Bowl, eight Final Fours (with a ninth set for 2026) and countless college tournaments across all sports – not to mention its 11 professional teams and a century-plus of the Indy 500 car race under its belt.
So how does a sports-forward city such as Indianapolis shift gears to welcome hundreds of thousands of Swifties to town instead of, say, 70,000 Colts fans on any given Sunday? The trio of Lucas Oil concerts were announced in August 2023, but the city’s wheels began spinning months before that.
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“We formed a local organizing committee, much like we do ahead of a major sporting event, to involve community partners to make sure that this was more than a concert,” Chris Gahl, senior VP of marketing/communications for Visit Indy, tells Billboard. “And so, over the last 18 or 20 months, a group has been meeting to think about and worry about how we welcome the anticipated 200,000 visitors and fans to our city.”
That huge swath of tourists is all coming to cheer for Swift – and while her arena is entertainment and not sports, when the music business is keeping score (like on the Billboard charts, for instance), she’s typically in the winners’ circle. On our most recent year-end charts, Swift was our overall top artist of 2023 and has ranked in the year-end top 10 in 14 of the last 16 years. She’s also tied with Drake for the most Billboard Music Awards wins of all time, picking up 39 prizes over her two decades in the industry.
And beyond the numbers, from its start in March 2023, The Eras Tour has been nothing short of an athletic feat. Swift is carrying a three-and-a-half-hour production of live singing and dancing, performing as many as four consecutive nights at a time across the world for almost 20 months. Beyond her Kansas City Chiefs star boyfriend Travis Kelce, we’ve seen professional athletes marveling at the endurance her concert must require, with Houston Texans defensive lineman J.J. Watt saying after attending opening weekend in Arizona: “She did not stop the whole time. There was no intermission. There was no halftime. There was no TV timeouts. The longest break she took was maybe three minutes for a costume change. And she was singing, dancing, entertaining the entire time — 70,000 people hanging on every single word and move she was making. … And she crushed it. And she didn’t even look tired. I was tired and I was just sitting there!”
With stats and stamina like hers, maybe Swift is a better fit for a sports town like Indy than it would appear at first glance. And to match her undefeated record, the city went especially big with signage for the Eras Tour dates – like, six-figure investment and 350-feet big – including a 34-story decal of the pop star (approved by Swift’s team) splashed across the JW Marriott, Indy’s largest hotel. They’ve also temporarily renamed 32 downtown streets after Swift songs, so visitors can take a stroll down Bad Blood Boulevard, All Too Well Way and, of course, Cornelia Street. And in a move sure to relieve fans desperate for a souvenir who don’t want to spend their entire night in a line, the adjacent Indiana Convention Center – typically home to massive fan experiences during major sporting events – has transformed its Exhibit Hall I into a pop-up merch stand, open to all Swifties from Wednesday to Saturday, no concert ticket required.
Visit Indy
And the Taylor Effect can be felt beyond the tourism board’s efforts. Local sports bars are playing their part too: The Slippery Noodle – a nearly 175-year-old bar and restaurant sitting a convenient three blocks from the stadium – is setting up a Swift-themed mocktail bar for young fans, complete with an accompanying friendship bracelet and glittery straw, as well as a “Dad’s Lounge” for any parents or partners delivering kids and spouses to the stadium and looking for a spot to chill for three and a half hours or so.
“We do have a couple of staff members that are Swifties, so I think they’ll be prepared to do some trading,” Slippery Noodle co-owner Sean Lothridge laughs to Billboard when asked whether his team will be armed with the Eras Tour’s trusty friendship bracelets. “It’s kind of something new for me. I don’t really know the Swifties as well, but I’m trying my best to learn a little bit about it.”
Over the summer, Lothridge got used to a different superstar woman drawing crowds to his bar, when a certain WNBA rookie came to town. “The Caitlin Clark effect with the Fever was tremendous,” he says, adding that fans were coming in from all over the country to go to Indiana Fever games at the nearby Gainbridge Fieldhouse. “We were getting good crowds from her fans, so she’s been a good boost for the city.”
This weekend’s concertgoers are also traveling from all over, with Gahl telling Billboard that 81% of the Indy ticket-holders are coming from outside the state of Indiana – presenting a massive opportunity to paint the sports town in a brand-new light, or introduce it to first-timers. The biggest difference between the Eras Tour weekend versus a high-stakes sporting event, Gahl notes, is that everyone should leave Lucas Oil Stadium a winner.
“You usually have two teams — sometimes four teams — that are taking sides, if you will, and advocating that their team wins,” he says. “In this case, it’s a commonality – and that is the love for the artist and her music. So whereas we’ve created different zones or restaurants or bars to align with a certain team in the past for major sporting events, this is a uniter. This is one city, one event, one weekend, all for the same artist and music, and it’s the capstone to her [U.S.] tour. So it feels like there’s even more unity and programming and everyone collecting for one common goal.”
For the next three nights, everyone entering the stadium is rooting for the same side: Team Taylor.
All products and services featured are independently chosen by editors. However, Billboard may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes.
Ever wanted to listen to music from your favorite video games on the go? Nintendo announced a new mobile app called Nintendo Music, which features tracks from games such as Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Metroid Prime, Donkey Kong Country, Animal Crossing: New Horizons and much more.
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Available on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store, the Nintendo Music app is free to download for the Apple iPhone and Android smartphones starting on Thursday, Oct. 31. While the app itself is free to download, you have to be a Nintendo Switch Online member to access it.
Memberships are available for purchase at Target with prices starting at $7.99 for three months, which breaks down to about $2.66 per month. Nintendo Switch Online is available at Amazon and Walmart too.
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Nintendo Music features key musical moments across very popular Nintendo titles with background and offline play, while you can create your own playlists to mix and match tracks from various franchises. You can enjoy extended playback of specific tracks up to 60 minutes without interruption.
Nintendo
Nintendo Music
Nintendo
Nintendo Switch Online
Meanwhile, a membership to Nintendo Switch Online gets you access to, not only the Nintendo Music app, but also online multiplayer mode for select titles, backup cloud data storage and a curated library of playable NES, Super Nintendo and Game Boy games. Learn more about Nintendo Switch Online.
Check out a list of video game music available (not all tracks from each game are featured in the app):
Pikmin 4
Pokémon Scarlet
Pokémon Violet
Splatoon 3
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Kirby Star Allies
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Metroid Prime
Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
Donkey Kong Country
The Nintendo Music app is a free download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. In the meantime, watch the announcement trailer, below:
Want more? For more product recommendations, check out our roundups of the best Xbox deals, studio headphones and Nintendo Switch accessories.
How was school today? The kids at an elementary school in Brooklyn got to tell their parents that they had a substitute teacher — one that really put them to work. BLACKPINK‘s LISA showed up at PS 282 and spent the day teaching a group of students some “Rockstar” moves. LISA’s day teaching is shown […]
The tables turn in Rihanna‘s latest interview, which has the singer asking most of the questions.
Rihanna appears on Tuesday’s (Oct. 29) new episode of Recess Therapy, the feel-good YouTube series featuring interviews with regular kids who usually don’t realize their answers are funny — they’re just being themselves. (You might remember the web series for the “it’s corn” kid that went viral with this video in 2022.)
On the latest episode Rihanna meets 7-year-old Miles, her favorite Recess Therapy kid. Miles has previously talked to stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Dua Lipa, and those videos are probably among those Rihanna’s seen.
“I actually am a fan of yours, Miles,” she tells him on the new episode, adding, “I got a little bit excited about it and I started watching all your videos. You’re really funny.”
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“I know,” Miles says.
Throughout the adorable conversation, Rihanna and Miles discuss songs and shoes, and address important life topics like confidence, thinking too much, lying and making friends.
What’s Miles’ favorite Rihanna song? “Shine bright like a diamond,” he says, without hesitation, which is cuteness overload for Rihanna.
“Love on the Brain” is her favorite to sing, she tells him. “Love on the Brain” is from her eighth studio album, Anti, released in 2016. Pop music lovers have been waiting for Rihanna’s ninth album since then.
Young Miles is much more present than most of us grownup interviewers, with no reason to think in headlines — so, unfortunately for her fans, he doesn’t get scoop on R9 on Recess Therapy. He discusses his love life with pop star instead.
Watch Rihanna’s sweet guest spot on Recess Therapy below.
Selena Gomez and David Henrie attended the Wizards Beyond Waverly Place premiere on Monday night (Oct. 28), as the duo are expected to reprise their roles as Alex and Justin Russo, respectively on the upcoming spin-off of Disney’s Wizards of Waverly Place. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and […]