Stressed Out by 21 Pilots on childrens radio

Since there's no board for discussion about childrens radio services here, I thought this would be the appropriate place for this question. I don't understand why any childrens service would play this song. Yes it's a hit, and on the surface if you look at the lyrics there's nothing there that would prevent a station targeting children from playing it, but when you start digging deeper, the subject matter is one that I'm not convinced most children understand. There's a line that repeats over and over, "We used to play pretend, give each other different names, we would build a rocket ship and fly to outer space." That's the place where the target audience of these stations is at, so I'm not sure why it's getting airplay on these stations. While I don't claim to be an expert on what makes a hit song, from the first couple times I heard it I knew it would be a hit, not because it was a good song but because it resonates with the CHR audience. I realized all this before I heard the episode of Switched On Pop where they broke this song down, and revealed a much more political message of income inequality that I hadn't picked out before. So, that brings me back to the original question of why childrens radio would be playing this song.

Simple: my son loves it and sings along. He's 7.

Hmmmmmm that's quite interesting.

Because there's nothing inappropriate per se and kids really only concentrate on the beat and melody? The only real big factor here that would prevent Radio Disney, Nick Radio, or iHeartRadio Family from playing it would be the subject matter that kids can't really relate to. And once again, kids don't care about the subject matter until their double digits.

Another view of it is: how many kids are really going to dig deeper into the lyrical content? When I was a kid, did I really try to figure out that Robert Plant was singing about characters in a Tolkien novel?

That's true. That being said, is it even appropriate for adults to decide what's appropriate for children and what isn't?

bobdavcav said:

So, that brings me back to the original question of why childrens radio would be playing this song.

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For the same reason Top 40 stations played stuff like the Shirelles "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" back in the "good old days:" Teenagers and young adults will understand the meaning of the lyrics, but little kids won't. That song, particularly, is one I'm surprised got the airplay it did, giving the "innocently-written, but..." lyrics about premarital sex. That was in the early 1960s, and it was hardly the only song like that.

Knowing the upbringing of the guys in Twenty One Pilots there are far worse things Radio Disney could be playing just saying. These guys are legit and nothing harmful with their music.