5 Great Pop Songs for Kids to Sing and Play

It can be quite challenging to find popular music that is appropriate for use in an elementary classroom. I use pop music quite often in my music classes, and I'm always on the hunt for new, "clean" songs. We use the songs for all sorts of movement activities as well as for singing and playing in our ukulele program.

This is a list of some of the songs we use on a regular basis. They are not all new, but they're all safe for classroom use!

1. "Better When I'm Dancing" by Meghan Trainor (from The Peanuts Movie)

This is my new favorite! Great beat, great words, great for dancing...this song helps me get through those daily requests for the old kid-favorite game, "Freeze Dance".

We play this one on ukulele in a different key:

2. "Can't Stop the Feeling" by Justin Timberlake (from The Trolls)

This one really gets us moving, AND we can play it on the ukulele while we're getting down. With the exception of the "under the lights" section, the entire song is just C-am-F-am. My youngest students play the entire thing on the C chord only and have an absolute blast doing so!

Here's my ukulele video for this one:

3. "Count On Me" by Bruno Mars

Pretty obvious choice with this one! Great message, great melody...fun for singing and playing. This isn't the official Bruno Mars video channel, so hopefully this link will continue to work:

Here's the ukulele play along video we use with our students:

4. "Lost Boy" by Ruth B

My students still love this one even though they've been playing and singing it for a couple of years. While the em chord can be challenging, this one is fairly easy to play because the em-G-C-G chord progression repeats for almost the entire song.

Here's my play along uke video for "Lost Boy":

5. "Best Day of My Life" by the American Authors

This song was a HUGE hit at our spring concert in 2017! The students absolutely loved playing and singing it.

And here's the ukulele play along video:

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