Dance

Lenny Pearce had been producing electronic music and uploading it to SoundCloud for years, but it wasn’t until he made a remix unlike anything being played in the club scene that his career skyrocketed.
“The first one that really took off was ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes,’ techno version,” says the Australian producer.

He’s speaking about his edit of the classic children’s song that encourages kids to touch their head, shoulders, knees and toes. (And eyes, and ears, and mouth and nose.) But instead of being rendered in traditional sing-song, Pearce’s version is done with kickdrum and waves of dark synth.

It’s one of many canonical children’s songs that Pearce has made dance remixes of, forging a genre he calls “toddler techno,” and with it carving out a niche space in the touring world with his baby raves.

Trending on Billboard

Thus far, Pearce has hosted events in Australia, Bahrain, Singapore and the United States, where he launched a ten-date tour this week. The run hits nine U.S. cities through the end of the month, with each event welcoming between 700 to 1,500 children and parents. Most of the shows sold out within minutes, altogether selling more than 11,000 tickets. After the U.S. he’s off to Malaysia and has had offers come in from Kenya as well.

“Nursery rhymes are just known by everyone,” he says of his global demand.

DJ-ing all-ages parties wasn’t on Pearce’s radar when he started in entertainment. 15 years ago, he was part of a 10-person breakdancing crew that won Australia’s Got Talent in 2010. This team, Justice Crew, then transformed into a boy band that clocked hits like “Boom Boom,” which hit No. 1 on the Australian ARIA Singles chart. Pearce DJ’d as part of Justice Crew shows and fell in love with production, eventually leaving the group to focus on it. While his career was for a time “going nowhere,” he says he eventually became a better and better producer, working in house and tech house and uploading his music to streaming platforms while trying to get the attention of labels.

Then, two years ago his first child — a daughter — was born. “She captured my heart,” Pearce says. “I wanted to do everything for her.” He was still making music, but was suddenly also a stay-at-home dad. And as any parent who’s spent long stretches of time with their young child has likely experienced, traditional children’s music was suddenly on heavy rotation in the Pearce household.

“She liked ‘The Wheels On the Bus’ and and all that,” says Pearce of his daughter. “With my creative mind I was thinking that I could remix these songs and put them on TikTok.” Amid the bottles and naps, he did just that, working from his home studio. “And then it just started to take off from there.”

One of Pearce’s first uploads, the techno edit of “Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes” quickly racked up 500,000 views, with Pearce’s follower count on TikTok growing from 30,000 to over a million as he uploaded other kid-centric club edits. (He now has 2.1 million followers on the platform.) The track’s success lead him to sign myriad remixes to the longstanding Dutch dance label Spinnin’ Records, an imprint he’d been trying to get the attention of for years. In 2024, Spinnin’ released his slinky club version of “Wheels On the Bus,” which now has 2.3 million views on YouTube alone.

Pearce’s career was also buoyed by the fact that his identical twin brother, John Pearce, is a current members of Australian kids group The Wiggles. (The brothers were also both members of Justice Crew.) The connection made it possible for Lenny to remix an entire Wiggles album into The Wiggles Soundsystem: Rave of Innocence, which featured 14 edits of classics by the group. The album hit No. 1 on the ARIA Australian Dance Albums Chart.

Pearce’s work isn’t entirely reinventing the wheel. Snoop Dogg has done his own interpretations of children’s music, and in 2020, Marshmello and his team capitalized on the artist’s popularity among children and launched a kids-focused content platform. Dance edits of kids songs have been around for years, but mostly as one-offs, making them harder for parents to find in aggregate.

“There’s not one artist who has been doing it,” Pearce says. “There’ll be a random guy who does a trap version of ‘Five Little Ducks’ or something. But in the eyes of toddlers and parents, there hasn’t been an artist who they can go to for this sound.”

Pearce says the messages he gets from parents around the world are often ones of gratitude, given that his music provides something that children love, but which is different than the traditional kids fare that can become mind-numbing with repetition. His music is also a way for parents to connect with the club vibe that, for many, defined their pre-child years.

As such, Toddler Techno live events was the next logical step, with Pearce signing with WME for representation late last year.

“A DJ performing for kids and families sounded wild enough to be huge, and that’s exactly what it is,” says Pearce’s agent at WME, Peter Schwartz. “The family market has always been strong — parents need entertainment! Lenny’s engaging both kids and the parents who were raving not too long ago and still want to have fun.”

To wit, Pearce’s current U.S. tour sold out every show in ten minutes, Scwartz says, with second shows added in most markets. The run comes on the heels of Pearce’s debut album Toddler Techno (Vol. 1), released in March. Pearce is playing traditional pop/rock venues like Los Angeles’ Roxy Theater, The Brooklyn Bowl and Chicago’s Outset, and a bigger fall tour currently in the planning stages. Show tickets range between $30 and $40, with some venues letting very young children in for free.

“What Lenny’s doing is fun, fresh, and a little edgier than other kids’ acts,” says Scwartz, “which we think really sets him apart.”

Pearce, who has a warm personality, a wide smile and a long, colorful braid that in fact gives him an aptly cartoonish quality, says kids have always just naturally been drawn to him, making him the perfect artist to play a party designed for families. (To wit, he’s also collaborated with kids entertainment juggernauts including Nickelodeon, Disney and Hasbro.) His shows welcome even the newest of newborns (“There’s like, babies in carriages,” he says) and are not seated, meaning kids and parents can roam the dancefloor like attendees do in adults-only settings.

On the road, Pearce has seen entire families come dressed in matching mermaid outfits and others in tutus. (His now two year old daughter also prefers this latter accessory, with Pearce and his wife also welcoming a baby boy in April.) Shows also offer face-painting, hair braiding and photo booths, and a recent event had a giant inflatable octopus in the middle of the dancefloor. These elements are obviously kid-centric, but they’re also not really different from standard activities and styles at adults clubs and festivals. At a show in Philadelphia earlier this week, kids clutched glow sticks and wore sunglasses on the dancefloor, and their parents did too.

Pearce has heard plenty of jokes about attendees taking shots of apple juice versus alcohol and acknowledges that one of the reasons why what he does is so popular is because “it’s like an extreme to an extreme. Rave culture is supposed to be all about drugs and partying and this and that, and then kids are so innocent. But it’s not about the party aspect, it’s about music, entertainment, unity and including the whole family.”

There’s a lot of forthcoming music to keep the tiny fists pumping. Pearce has a new album of remixed kids classics dropping soon, with his ability to reconfigure these songs possible because many are old enough to be covered by public domain and are not under copyright. When Pearce does eventually get through the well of kids classics, he says he’ll simply shift genres and do all of the same music in drum & bass, or deep house, or reggaetón. “By the time that cycles around, we’ll all be retired,” he says.

In the meantime, he seems to have found his calling as both an artist and a dad.

“A lot of parents say they play my remixes in the car on the way to school or daycare and it’s not a buzzkill,” he says. “The kids enjoy it, and they do, too.”