Track listing: Down in the Dumps, Easy Going Day, Fireworks, Ferris Wheel, Turn It Up, You Moved, Bubble Up, Adhd, I Want Wings, So Long, Coward
There is something wonderfully ridiculous about the idea of a children’s pop-punk album. Not “ridiculous” in the sense of being silly or disposable, but in the sense that somebody looked at the ingredients of classic pop punk — chunky guitars, pounding drums, gang vocals, dramatic breakdowns, sugary melodies, bratty attitudes and enough energy to power a small city — and decided, “You know what this needs? Life lessons for children.”
Enter Bert Badger.
Pop Punk Kids, Bert’s fifth album, is a three-year labor of love that takes the familiar sounds of the pop-punk era and turns them toward the everyday experiences, emotions and strange little fascinations of childhood. Musically, much of the credit belongs to Jon Paul Kauffman, formerly of Lansing, Michigan’s Boink, who composed the music and handled mixing and mastering on the project. Bert supplied the lyrics, often singing his ideas first and allowing Kauffman to build the music around them.
The result sounds like somebody opened a time capsule containing the musical DNA of Blink-182, Sum 41 and Bowling for Soup, then handed it to a particularly enthusiastic elementary-school kid.
And it works.
The album opens with “Down in the Dumps,” which immediately establishes that Pop Punk Kids isn't interested in pretending children are perpetually happy. The song acknowledges bad moods with an almost hilariously relatable honesty: sometimes you are just having one of those days. Toward the end, the song breaks into a terrific call-and-response centered around the simple reassurance that it’s okay to be sad and okay to get mad.
That’s one of the album’s greatest strengths. Bert takes the emotional vocabulary of pop punk — frustration, confusion, excitement, rebellion and outsized feelings — and removes the adolescent cynicism. The attitude remains, but the destination changes.
“Easy Going Day” has an especially interesting history. Bert remembered the song from the 1985 Sesame Street movie Follow That Bird, a film he watched as a kid, and eventually decided to bring the song into his own musical world. It’s a fitting choice for Pop Punk Kids, carrying the uncomplicated sense of fun and adventure that runs throughout the album.
Then there’s “I Want Wings,” which might be the album’s purest expression of childhood imagination. The premise is beautifully simple: wanting wings so you can fly wherever you want. It’s the sort of idea that makes perfect sense when you’re a kid — and, honestly, still makes a pretty good case for itself when you’re an adult. “I Want Wings” captures something that can easily disappear as we get older: the willingness to accept an impossible idea simply because it would be awesome.
Elsewhere, Bert tackles more mundane but equally important subjects. “Turn It Up” celebrates the sheer joy of making some noise. “Ferris Wheel” and “Bubble Up” lean into the playful, kinetic side of childhood, while “You Moved” and “So Long” explore the changes and separations that inevitably come with growing up.
“ADHD” takes things into more serious territory. Its lyrics describe the frustration of feeling different, having trouble concentrating and feeling overwhelmed by a mind that won't cooperate. Rather than turning the subject into a joke, Bert presents it from the perspective of a child trying to understand what is happening inside their own head.
That emotional honesty is important because Pop Punk Kids doesn't seem particularly interested in talking down to its audience. These aren't songs written for babies. They’re written for kids — and, as Bert points out, the “and up” matters.
The production reinforces that idea. Kauffman clearly understands the vocabulary of pop punk: the drum breakdowns, halftime shifts, layers of harmonies and multi-vocal call-and-response sections all contribute to a sound that feels genuinely connected to the genre rather than merely resembling it from a distance.
There’s a lot of fun packed into these eleven songs, but underneath the goofy premises and infectious energy is a pretty consistent philosophy: it's okay to feel weird, it's okay to have bad days, it's okay to get excited about things, and it's okay to look at the world with a little wonder.
That makes Pop Punk Kids more than a novelty.
It’s pop punk with the snark removed, the empathy turned up and the imagination left completely intact.
And if you happen to be a grown-up who remembers when pop punk meant skateboards, distorted guitars and songs about being an irresponsible teenager, don't be surprised if you find yourself singing along.
Just don't be surprised when your kid beats you to it.