There's a secret behind the million-selling success of the Rockabye Baby! brand of lullaby recordings of your favourite rock 'n' roll artists -- none of the company's owners have kids.
"It's part of the success of the product," says Lisa Roth, the music label executive in Silver Lake, California, who launched the brand in 2005. "It speaks to that part of an adult that doesn't cease to exist once you have children and that doesn'tget addressed with typical baby products. If any of us had children, I'm not sure it would work."
The lullabies, which have been made to the music of Van Halen, Coldplay, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and 35 other artists -- a special Canadian-only CD was released this week of the Tragically Hip -- keep the melodies of the original recordings, but replaces instruments such as electric guitars and drums with harps and glockenspiels. It's a formula that keeps the hooks of your favourite pop tunes -- songs like "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen and Weezer's "Island in the Sun" -- eliminates the vocals, and turns bedtime into an opportunity for mom and dad to relive their youth.
"People think we make the songs into lullabies by slowing them down, but actually you keep the original tempo and arrangement," says Roth, 54, who recently pushed through the lullabization of the Kanye West oeuvre. "It's putting together a puzzle: you want to retain the sentiment of the original, but it has to be calm enough to put a baby to bed."
Currently in 1,200 American stores, and another 300 Canadian toy shops, the Rockabye series of baby CDs are transforming Roth's CMH record label. Since the company -- which also produces bluegrass karaoke CDs and The Modern Wedding Collection -- has to pay big licensing fees to the original artists, Roth's expanding the Rockabye Baby! brand into the universe of baby gear, clothes and accessories.
"It won't stop at music, we're working on all kinds of things," Roth says, mentioning that her company's success has spawned a wave of imitation baby rock records. "When we started there wasn't anything like it and now there's any number of copycats, but that's OK -- we've been learning a lot about the baby market over the past six years."
The next few months will see Rockabye Baby! releases covering the music of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Foo Fighters and Depeche Mode. The company has already tackled such unlikely bands as Metallica and AC/DC. "Pretty much after you can make a lullaby out of Black Sabbath, you can do anything," Roth says.
At press time, there were no plans for releasing the Tragically Hip lullaby record in America, but Roth says making the album was a good move for her brand.
"Even when we produce artists that we don't love -- someone's a fan, someone else isn't -- when you approach an artist this way, the music becomes almost something else," Roth says. "It all just becomes interesting music to break down for a child even if we're all just a bunch of rock 'n' rollers out here, and none of us have kids."