Nick Cope was lead singer in British indie band The Candyskins, who were Oxford contemporaries of (if not as big as) Supergrass back in the 1990s. They broke up in 1998, and although they’ve reunited for a few one-off concerts since, there’s also an interesting postscript to their story in the new career of frontman Nick Cope.
He has reinvented himself as a children’s musician over a succession of albums, and now with a TV show (Nick Cope’s Popcast) which is proving a hit on British public service broadcaster the BBC’s preschool channel CBeebies. It’s a mixture of live action and animation, with each of the 14 episodes lasting five minutes and featuring topics including dinosaurs, robots, penguins and walking.
Cope isn’t the only ‘indie guy from the 1990s’ to make this kind of career leap either: Chris Ballew from Presidents Of The United States of America (of ‘Lump’ and ‘Peaches’ fame – sorry for your earworms today!) has his Caspar Babypants alter-ego, who’s been very successful.
The backdrop to all this is the growth of children’s music on digital platforms: YouTube in particular, but also Spotify, which now has its standalone Spotify Kids app. As for Cope, anyone behind a track like ‘The Baby’s Done a Poo‘ is fine by us…
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