Charlie Faye and the Fanimals Bring Motown to Kids on Self-Titled Debut

I don't often review children's albums for two reasons. First, I don't have any kids so I'm not the album's target audience. Second, children's albums are almost uniformly terrible. There are only so many times you can hear about the wheels on the bus going 'round and 'round before you wish the bus would run you over and end the pain. But when I heard that Charlie Faye, of modern '60s girl group Charlie Faye and the Fayettes, was planning an album of Motown-inspired original kids' music, I had to check it out.

The resulting self-titled album by Charlie Faye and the Fanimals features Faye's Fayette mates Betty Soo and Akina Adderly on background vocals and delivers on its promise of songs aimed at children that sound like they were plucked straight out of the '60s. But there are some modern twists here that nod to the album's 2023 release date.

The most notable of these is “Milo Wears a Tutu.” Featuring a young boy (and eventually grown man) who wants nothing more than to wear a pink tutu when he dances, it sounds like The Ronettes, except the Ronettes never would have gotten away with singing a ditty about a boy in a tutu.

“7 Days of Fun” opens the album and is a fairly simple, if fun, counting song. It details a child's activities on each day of the week and features a baritone-voiced male announcer counting along. It's a bit like if The Big Bopper suddenly voiced The Count from Sesame Street.

The one song on the album that adults may not appreciate is “Armadillo,” not because it's a bad song. It's actually one of the album's catchiest; which is exactly the problem. It's a sneaky earworm that will cause you to find yourself with “arma-arma-arma-armadillo” stuck in your skull at inconvenient times, like when you're trying to sleep.

While it's not an album I'd probably listen to again on my own (I have Charlie Faye and the Fayettes for that), if I were stuck on a long car ride with my niece and we were listening to The Fanimals instead of the latest Kidz Bop offering, I definitely wouldn't complain.

Charlie Faye and the Fanimals is out now.