Sam Smith’s demonic performance of his song, “Unholy,” at the Grammys this year shocked pundits across the nation.  Clad in more red robes than found at a Handmaid’s Tale abortion rights protest, Smith and his henchmen writhed and wriggled onstage to the lyrics, “Mummy don’t know Daddy’s getting hot, At the Body Shop, Doin’ something unholy…”.   Christian conservatives were not the only group critical of the show.  Elon Musk mocked the artist tweeting, “If that’s satan, we have nothing to worry about.” 

Even The Blaze published an article critical of the performance:

It was all show, with no story or clear concept. In fact, the most offensive thing about Smith's brief tenure on stage was something that most people seem to be overlooking: their god-awfully ugly hat.

For whatever reason one finds to take offense with the act (and there are several), I agree with The Blaze: Smith’s production “was all show.”  In fact, I consider it a smokescreen, set to distract from the more diabolical deeds dispensed by Hollywood.

While “Unholy” won a Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, a group named Alphabet Rockers won Best Children’s Music Album 2023 for its youth-targeting record, The Movement.  The musical group’s name implies innocence; in reality the ABCs of the moniker refer to CRT and LGBTQIA. 

According to the Alphabet Rockers’ website,

Our families need content that is healing, that reflects who we are and empowers us— that embraces Black liberation, Queer liberation, Indigenous rights, immigrant rights, and intersectionality.  Alphabet Rockers curates this content with the community, centering children’s voices. 

In a video explaining the concept behind the 2023 Grammy-winning children’s album, co-founder Kaitlin McGaw states the work is a soundtrack of future values, values of “truly undoing the past, of reparations, of abolition, of love above everything, radical love for yourself and your community….” 

In the same video her musical partner, Tommy Shepherd, wears T-shirts that read, “Don’t like abortions? Just ignore them,” and, “Happy 4rth U-Lied AmeriKKKa.”  The Alphabet Rockers aren’t “centering children’s voices.”  Instead, the group uses children to center the artists’ own radical ideologies.

Songs (and lyrics) compiled within the award-winning, The Movement, include “Restorative Justice” (“We’re leaving here today with community tactics And RJ is a constant and continuous practice; We restore fairness; We make peace”) and “The Change Up” (“For equity we gotta start embracing change; The way the systems working we can't let it stay the same; Its complex to try to beat the prison complex”).  The chorus in the song, “Juneteenth,” repeats, “Freedom is not individual its collective.”

Alphabet Rockers is not a Grammy newcomer.  The group’s album, The Love, was nominated for Best Children’s Album in 2020.  Rather than restorative justice, this album focused on gender justice.  One song, “We Royal,” contains the following lyrics:

We are cis and transgender Non binary non-conforming

From Stonewall Marsha P Johnson stood up for queer liberation

With the same drive that SYLVIA RAY RIVERA  battled discrimination  

Love beyond limits 

We are Intersex,

Two-spirit,

Our own thing 

The Love features interludes like “They/Them,” a cacophony of young voices (some seem as young as 3 or 4 years old) speaking pronouns and musing, “no one is exactly one gender.”

Alphabet Rockers markets its music to kids of all ages.  It also targets schools, specifically pre-K through 5^th grade.  The music group offers parent and educator equity workshops, anti-racist curriculum, and tools to practice land acknowledgements and advocate for systemic change.  The free curriculum starter pack includes a “They/Them” mp3 download.

While the group originates from progressive California, it is developing a nationwide audience. 

On February 8, just a few days after its Grammy Award was announced, Alphabet Rockers appeared in North Carolina at the NC State LIVE forum, and was featured as part of the program’s School Matinee Series.  

NC State Live advertises Alphabet Rockers to schools as an “intergenerational group [that] creates brave spaces to shape a more equitable world through hip hop. Their award winning albums inspire kids and families to stand up to bullying and be their brave and beautiful selves.”  The ad fails to mention a kindergartener’s key role in championing Queer liberation through song.

Public elementary school classes from the largest school district in North Carolina, Wake County, organized field trips to the event. 

At least two schools, Wiley Elementary and Farmington Woods Elementary, sent kindergarten and first-grade students to the show.  Whether any 5-year-olds started changing their pronouns afterward has yet to be determined.

To date, I have not seen any significant outlets or pundits voice criticism or direct attention to the 2023 Children’s Album of the Year as awarded by the Grammys.  Distracted by large-breasted demonesses brought to us by Pfizer ads, pundits overlooked that a record based in Queer Theory and woke social justice tenets was chosen as a superior soundtrack for childhood.  And taxpayer-funded elementary schools are buying it.

No doubt, C.S. Lewis would find this material appropriate for his devilish character, Screwtape.  Should Screwtape critique the dancing demons of the Grammy Awards or review the 2023 Children’s Album of the Year, we can imagine the bureaucratic Tempter offering a celebratory salute.  As he observed when toasting his fellow “Disgraces, Thorns, Shadies and Gentledevils” in Screwtape Proposes a Toast, Screwtape would conclude:

Every dictator or even demagogue—almost every film star or crooner—can now draw tens of thousands of the human sheep with him.  They give themselves—what there is of them—to him; in him, to us.

Image: Screen shot from CBS video, via YouTube