The who and the why:
I teach piano in the traditional sense with books, which focuses on sight reading.
When I was in high school I had room for 1 elective course. I happened to choose a music class with a technology aspect. I had already taken 10 years of piano lessons at this point and was finally introduced to guitar chords. Guitar chords can be played on piano. In fact, piano has more possibilities with base notes, suspended and augmented chords, etc. I added piano chords/guitar chords to lessons to challenge students in another way. Not only can they play songs that they like but they can be more creative, playing the accompaniment the way that they wish. Also, finding and playing the chords, inverting them requires spatial reasoning. Some students take more to sight reading than others but every student loves to play chords.
The problem:
Most of my students are between 8-12 years old.
I grew up listening to Mariah Carey, Toni Braxton, Celine Dion, and Whitney Houston. Most of my female students listen to current artists and have introduced me to Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo, and Sabrina Carpenter, among others. The problem became quite evident when song after song included inappropriate words and phrases. Even in the absence of profanity the themes and underlying meanings were highly inappropriate.
Most of my students were expressionless, some had the giggles. Some words could easily be substituted but entire lines were a lot harder to change, hence this site. Hopefully my site will help you sing and play songs with your students all while viewing and singing clean lyrics, appropriate lyrics, child-friendly lyrics, student-friendly lyrics, and other SEO words and phrases that I’m trying to cram into this section. I have done my best to get rid of bad words, curse words, profanity, potty talk, toilet talk, toilet humor, relationship references, innuendo, fighting, violence, chemicals, vices, poor choices, bad habits, and other adult references.
“I see no point in living if I can’t be beautiful.”
Wizard Howl, Howl’s Moving Castle
When students sing certain songs.
I hope that this site helps you avoid these situations.
Me when I read these lyrics and know that most of their fans are children, tweens, and young teens:
