There are two kinds of people in the world: people who understand how brilliant and masterful The Wiggles are, and people with depression.
This might sound like me blowing smoke just to give myself a good laugh before going to bed, but I am at least 98% serious here. People who write The Wiggles off as simply another run-of-the-mill children's act are completely overlooking just how innovative and clever they were as a group. Do not be fooled by the monochrome skivvies and fun-dentist-energy finger guns; there's a lot more going on inside that Big Red Car than we often give them credit for.
I became a born-again Wiggles fan last fall after I came across their literally chart-topping cover of Tame Impala's "Elephant" while eating lunch on a picnic table in Kings Canyon National Park. Now, that cover alone would have been cool enough to re-certify The Wiggles as bonafide legends in my mind, but the deeper I went down the Wiggles' Wikipedia rabbit hole, the more I realized I wanted nothing more for my Sunday afternoon in Kings Canyon National Park than to sit on my iPhone in a parking lot and soak in the warmth of Wiggles history for a full hour, which is exactly what I proceeded to do.
I watched some of their live performances and interviews again, and it became immediately obvious that The Wiggles were definitively musicians who decided to be a children's act rather than a children's act that decided to pose as musicians. Murray can hold his own on that fire engine red guitar, and Greg, despite looking like the spokesman for the benefits of abstinence, had a charm in his voice that made it instantly warm and engaging. The musicianship across the board is so airtight that you occasionally forget they're playing songs designed for preschoolers (until Dorothy the Dinosaur blurts in with one of her murderous giggly laughs that totally ruins the illusion). It almost feels like some of their songs would have succeeded on the mainstream pop charts...
...because that's exactly what happened. Few people know this, but before The Wiggles were The Wiggles, Anthony and Jeff were in an Australian pop band called The Cockroaches, and if you listen to some of The Cockroaches' songs, you'll notice some striking similarities to The Wiggles' early output. There are full YouTube videos that dig into this cross-pollination track-by-track, but all you have to do is listen to The Cockroaches' single "Do the Monkey" and then listen to The Wiggles' song "Do the Monkey" to see just how deliberate The Wiggles were in using their pop roots to make much more engaging children's music.
And "deliberate" seems to be the key word here because almost everything about The Wiggles' image was carefully calculated and constructed to be as inviting and comforting for kids as possible. Remember those finger guns I was making fun of earlier? Did you realize they do those fingers guns in every photograph with young kinds to ensure their hands are always visible and nobody can accuse them of any misconduct? Did you realize three of the four Wiggles were either studying or working in early childhood education when they started the band? These men weren't making it up as they went; they knew exactly what they were doing and what traits would make them successful because they knew exactly what their target audience of preschoolers and uncomfortably touchy soccer moms who had a crush on Greg needed.
Just like Jim Henson and Dr. Seuss, The Wiggles have lasted as long as they have because they weren't speaking down to kids. Sure, I'm not going to pretend like I find the lyrics to "Fruit Salad" particularly philosophically stimulating, but the truth is most Wiggles songs have really well-arranged instrumentation, follow the general song structure of pop hits, and contain genuinely catchy melodies that are much more forgiving on the ear than the one-note Chinese water torture of "Baby Shark." They created music assuming a certain intelligence level from the children listening rather than doing what most children's entertainers do and dumbing down the content to where an above-average gerbil could understand it. The best children's entertainment is made when the creators see the kids more as equals than as uneducated subordinates.
Don't get me wrong: if the Wiggles were coming to do a concert tomorrow evening in San Francisco, I would not go. I've seen plenty of video clips of The Wiggles playing jam-packed arena shows over the last few years, but I don't actually find The Wiggles that enjoyable to listen to anymore because I am, you know, 23. But the more I learn about The Wiggles, the more impressed I get with just how well-conceived and well-executed of a project it was. It's not easy to make genuinely entertaining yet intelligent children's content, but The Wiggles achieved it in every measurable metric. Bravo, Greg, Murray, Anthony, and Jeff. Bravo.
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