I have several feelings about this program that I want to discuss. Yes it is primarily a children's program but it is definitetly for the older kids and big kids like myself. I am interested in choirs and glee clubs, show choirs and that sort of thing so I tune in every year. The trouble is, things seem to be going from bad to worse.
The first series was good, really good. The groups stuck to good songs with simple tunes and a lot of them did musical theatre performances which were really brilliant.
The next series was the worse, nobody sung a show tune or older song (maybe they weren't allowed, I dunno) it was all recent pop songs.The trouble with songs these days is that they are really hard to sing (most singers today just seem to screech) or there's a difficult rap or rhythm in there or something. The kids were trying to put harmonies in which just weren't there and they were all out of tune. Most of these songs just don't have harmonies to go with them. Not many people write songs with good harmonies anymore. If they had sung a showtune or older song, things would have been much easier for them and they would have been able to stick somewhat in tune.
The series which has just finished was on the whole better, still some awful recent songs in there (did we really have to hear Wings by Little Mix, THREE TIMES!! There are thousands of other songs you could hsve picked.). On the other hand we had some kids doing Gospel and musical theatre and they were getting all the best praise from the judges. they seemed to be having the most fun as well. Lots of these groups were formed from drama schools and said they were really keen on musicals and then they came out and screeched along to some Katy Perry song, why not play to your strengths!
I also think loads of these songs aren't suitable for kids aged 8-12 (the age group CBBC is aimed at). The lyrics are sometimes incredibly unsuitable and there's the swearing (which they had to block out of course but they know it's there). Do the really young kids in the groups have any clue what they are singing about? If you don't know the meaning of the song, it's incredibly hard to put any sort of feeling into it.
By siinging all these recent hits over and over again. It makes kids think these are the only songs available to listen to. Kids should have the opportunity to listen to older (and better, haha!) songs and a program like CRDGC would be an excellent program to showcase some older songs on. Or songs from other genres other than pop. Like I say, the best groups were the ones who broadened the scope of their performances.
FInally why do producers of kids TV shows think that children have the memory of a millipede? At the start of each show we have to have about 5 minutes of repetition of what happened yesterday! I'm sure the kids can remember, they are not that stupid! Anyone who missed the previous show has probably watched it on Iplayer by now anyway. The constant going backstage to 'see how the groups are feelng' drives me nuts. All the groups are feeling nervous and excited, you'd expect them to be! We don't need constant reminding. In some of the shows it took 11 minutes to actually get round to the siinging. 11 MINUTES!!
I'm not going to be watching next year. I can't bear it any more.
Miss Pencil
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