If you don’t have children under 5, you almost certainly won’t have watched CoComelon . It’s a YouTube kids’ channel, the third most popular channel in the world, with 180 million subscribers. Its most popular video – Bath Song – has been watched almost seven billion times since it was uploaded in 2018 and is YouTube’s fourth most-watched video.
Bath Song is a brightly coloured animated song following JJ, the CoComelon baby who spends most of his time laughing, and his brother as they have a bath. Lyrics describe filling the bath, adding soap and the song’s chorus – “wash my hair do do do do do-do-do, wash my hair do do do do do-do-do, wash my hair do do do do do-do-do, wash my hair” – covers most parts of the body. “ CoCoMelon is hypnotic and mesmerising and, honestly, when I put it on my boy just stops what he’s doing and watches,” says Lucy, who runs a cafe and has a 2-year-old son.
“If I’m getting him to do anything he doesn’t want, I just put it on and he shuts up.” Lucy says she feels guilty using CoComelon as a pacifier, and parents on social media often refer to “CoComelon zombies” or “Cocainemelon”. But then parents have been using kids’ TV as a member of staff since Muffin the Mule arrived in 1946.
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