Alexa: [00:00:00] Everybody tends to think that the music they grew up with is some of the best music ever made. And I know that to be true because I grew up in the nineties and the noughties. So my childhood was soundtracked by the likes of S Club 7, Take That- and with that came my first ever crush, thank you Gary Barlow, The Vengaboys, Aqua, The Spice Girls, The Backstreet Boys, O-Town, Blue, Will Young... so yeah, I'm fairly certain that if your childhood and your teenhood didn't include some of these artists and their pop bangers, then you may have lived only half a life. And for that I can only apologise. 

But that does raise a very real question. Who are the Take That's and The Spice Girls' of today, and what are the tweens of 2026 going to say was some of the best music ever made when they reached their thirties? And as singing teachers who might be [00:01:00] far from tweenhood, how do we help suggest songs to our students who fit this demographic? 

Looks like we need an episode of the Singing Teachers Talk podcast, then. 

If you also grew up in the UK in the nineties and early noughties, the word 'tween' might conjure up images of four colourful and life-sized puppets called Milo, Fizz, Jake, and Bella, AKA, the Tweenies, a bit like the Teletubbies' older cousins. But that's not what we are here to discuss. And thank goodness because the Teletubbies give me the absolute heebie-jeebies. 

The term 'tween' or 'tweenager' references a preteen, someone between childhood and adolescence. And Google suggests that this might include ages 9 to 12 years. And today we are looking at some songs that could be brilliant for tweenage girls. 

In previous episodes, we have talked [00:02:00] about some of the considerations we might want to make when it comes to selecting repertoire from whether we should even be picking repertoire at all to thinking about age appropriate topics and lyrical content, so the show notes will point you in the direction of where you can find those discussions. And all of the material in the episode 10 Songs for Child Singers are actually good ones to add to this list here too. 

Understanding what biological female singers may experience during this period- pardon pun- can be helpful. So for example, in the Vocal Health First Aid course and in her book Teaching Singing to Children and Young Adults, Dr. Jenevora Williams talks about posterior glottic chinks, increased breathiness during puberty, potential tightness and difficulty in releasing, lack of upper pitch exploration, intonation issues, smaller lung volumes, [00:03:00] possible technical limitations, and vocal ranges of roughly A3-G5ish. 

When we are suggesting repertoire for this age range, it can be helpful to consider what lives in the same cultural world as them. We might ask ourselves or them: what world are they growing up in? What's important to them? What are they watching on tv and what are they reading? What are they listening to? 

 To be honest with you, I found this one pretty difficult. I'm in my late thirties. I refuse to have a TikTok account. I don't have any children of my own and my friends' children are just a little bit out of this age bracket at the moment. I have some students of this age, which have given me some clues. But most of the people I work with are in an older age group. 

Between the ages of 9 and 12, I can think of a few things that I was doing: playing with Sylvanian [00:04:00] families, playing make believe as a teacher- big LOL on that one, now. Attending drama club on the weekends. Playing radios with the Hi-Fi system that I had in my bedroom. Playing out with friends, playing on the PlayStation, seeing family, and reading. Lots and lots of reading. 

I did however, turn to my soon to be 9-year-old niece, Everly, to ask her some questions to get any insight at all. And this is what she had to say. 

Everly, what songs do you sing at choir? 

Everly: Um, We Are Unstoppable, gonna sing Revolting Children. When I Grow Up. I'm Still Standing. The Climb. 

Alexa: What's your favourite one? 

Everly: We are unstoppable. 

Alexa: Who's your favourite singer? 

Everly: Ariana Grande.  

Alexa: Do you like slow songs? 

Everly: No. 

Alexa: You also mentioned a Sabrina Carpenter song just now. 

Everly: Yeah 

Alexa: but... 

Everly: it has the F word in it. 

Alexa: Oh, so we don't like that [00:05:00] one. What is your favourite subject at school? 

Everly: Art. 

Alexa: Ah, why do you like art so much? 

Everly: Because it's incredible and it's got loads of detail in it. And we've been learning about Pam Glennie. She's an artist and we used watercolors to recreate a picture and then we use oil pastels. 

Alexa: What is something that's really, really important to you? 

Everly: My family. 

Alexa: Ah, am I included in that? 

Everly: Yes. 

Alexa: Yay. 

Everly: And Peter. 

Alexa: And Peter. 

 all right, so maybe we've already got five songs right there, but the one that stood out for me is the one Everly said was her favourite -We Are Unstoppable, which was written by Emily Barden and was part of the Sing Up Foundation's Sing Up Day in 2021. And back in 2024, we actually chatted with Baz Chapman and Celi Barbaria from the Sing Up [00:06:00] Foundation on the topic of Singing in Wellness, and you can go and watch that episode right after this one. 

The lyrics of this song, We Are Unstoppable, promotes positivity, hope, and community, as well as having a mostly contemporary feel, satisfying a bit of that uptempo preference, perhaps. The vocal range in the main is around C4-Bb4 with, if working in groups, the possibility of extending that to C5, and the chance for canon and harmony. 

Another song which has quite a hopeful message amidst the dark theme was introduced to me by a student and it's 'Hello, Stars' from The Book Thief, A musical based on the brilliant novel by Mark Zusak, and adapted for stage by another author extraordinaire, Jodi Picoult, and Timothy Allen McDonald, with music and lyrics by Elyssa Samuel and Kate [00:07:00] Anderson. 

I read the book years ago, and arguably because of its themes, the original novel itself might be suited to older readers. But that said, I remember learning about World War II in school and loving the book Goodnight, Mr. Tom, which is about an evacuee in World War II called William. So that might be a good alternative if you want to pair this with some literature. 

The Book Thief is a story narrated by death -chirpy, set in Nazi Germany. The protagonist, Liesel, steals slash saves books and shares them with others, including the Jewish man who hides in her basement. At the beginning of the story, Liesel is about nine years old and then grows up during the time of the war. 

Hello, Stars is an early song for her in the musical as she finds comfort in the night sky. The vocal range is approximately A3-C5 with some descending fifth intervallic movements, [00:08:00] which can be really good for helping singers stabilise those lower notes without sending their larynxes down the mine to find them. 

Keeping us on the musical theme is Up on the Fridge from Dear Ediwna which is a one hour musical aimed at children written by Zina Goldrich and Marcy Heisler. Edwina Spoonapple, great name, is pretty much a tween herself and someone with high achieving siblings. We've got Katie, who's a maths wizard, and Myra and Joe who are budding musicians. 

 And Edwina talks of all the certificates and prizes that adorn the fridge, but none of which belong to her. But there is something that Edwina is really good at, which is giving advice to others. And in this I Want Song, she imagines having an invitation to the Advice a Palooza Festival, which would see her name added to the fridge. 

It is a really fun character song, so good for [00:09:00] exploring acting through song, and the vocal range offers opportunity to explore the head voice sitting approximately between a G3-C5 according to musicnotes.com 

I've used this song many times in sessions, and one of my students actually won the Junior Basingstoke Young Musician of the Year with it. So it's tried and tested. Not only that, but it might even satisfy that family element, offering some conversation in sessions about the singer's own family and siblings contributing to rapport. And you never know when you can even borrow those siblings names to pop into an exercise to make it that little bit more relatable. 

I promise I'm not going to talk about musical theatre all the time, but to round us off in this category are two songs, which I think might be useful. 

Once Upon a December from Anastasia, which I think can be a really good song to introduce more legit like qualities to a singer interested in musical theatre and maybe going into higher [00:10:00] education in musical theatre training, as it's considered more contemporary legit. This means we can sort of meet the singer where they are whilst opening up possibilities in areas, maybe less explored without shoving them in a time machine and launching them into the possibly unfamiliar sounds of Leonard Bernstein or Rodgers and Hammerstein. 

Then for the singer who is seeking a grungier, a little bit more mature, darker, Lydia from Beetlejuice esque type song, perhaps Black Friday from Starkid's musical of the same name could be a good option here. And I'm gonna give a shout out to fellow teacher and my pal Sarah Joyce on this one because she introduced me to it. 

Starkid is responsible for the Harry Potter musical parody, A Very Potter Musical, and they have now produced 15 full length musicals themselves. 

Black Friday is a horror comedy about people trying to get their hands on a Tickle Me [00:11:00] Wiggly toy on the mad dash that is Black Friday. When I was a kid, it was Furbies, which actually don't look worlds away from the Tickle Me Wiggly toy. It's got a rocky feel at times, and the vocal range covers approximately G3-B4 sitting mainly in that possibly more familiar chest voice register and low belt options with moments of switch into the head voice. 

There's that slightly tricky space that tweens can end up occupying, where many of them want to feel maybe a bit more grown up, but not too grown up. So songs that have a sense of maturity, confidence, or independence, without diving headfirst into very adult themes might be a sweet spot. 

Birdy was about 14 years old, barely out of tweenhood herself when she recorded and released her version of Bon Iver's Skinny Love, and her catalogue can be quite helpful, I think. 

Wings has a vocal range of an octave [00:12:00] between D4-D5, asking the singer to make a fairly large leap, roughly a minor seventh between E4-D5 in the chorus. This could be really good for the singer who tends to stick around in something thicker in that it'll ask them to release and pop into something lighter for a time, helping to train flexibility and access head voice. 

 I also quite like Not About Angels by Birdy, too, although better for the singer who favours a hard hitting ballad, perhaps. This will very much help a singer to explore head voice with a vocal range that reaches up to an F5. It features on the soundtrack for the film The Fault in Our Stars based on the young adult novel of the same name. 

And I remember reading that book on my first ship contract and no spoilers, but I ended up sobbing on the crew deck in the Mediterranean sun. How dramatic. 

Olivia Rodrigo can be quite popular amongst tweens, and I think she's releasing her third studio [00:13:00] album this year. I was driving to work the other day and heard the version The Book of Love on the radio originally sung by The Magnetic Fields. It appears on the War Child UK's charity album and the vocal range is around Gsharp3-Dsharp4, so not a big range at all, and it's not hugely challenging. 

And what about Valerie By Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson? It's a classic karaoke, feel good, bop... doesn't really feel like it's that old. It's sort of stood the test of time and maybe keeps things relevant with Mark Ronson having just won the outstanding contribution to music award at the 2026 Brit Awards. 

 If the G3s are a bit low, like in maybe some of the other songs I've mentioned too, we can get creative in helping the singer change up the pitches without maybe having to change the whole key just to keep things within a more comfortable range. 

Social media trends, streaming platforms and chart toppers can be really useful [00:14:00] too. Again, it might keep things relevant for them and let's be honest, it helps us feel a little bit more current too. 

That said, apparently Connie Francis' song Pretty Little Baby from back in the sixties was TikTok's Top Global Song of 2025, appearing in lots of different reels on the platform. 

And maybe that's a suggestion we could make, and this could absolutely help the next generation of singers appreciate generations before them. And this song has a vocal range of approximately Ab3-Bb4. 

And why stop there? What about a bit of rock and roll with Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock? Again, not a massive range, but for maybe a beginner singer in this age range or somebody who is struggling with pitch, maybe that could be a good song to enter on. 

People have been obsessed and mad about Stranger Things for years, and it came to an end in late 2025. You could get Stranger [00:15:00] Things, Christmas themed, everything: decorations, jumpers, Christmas crackers, the works. I tried to watch it, but maybe it just wasn't the right time because I just didn't find myself gelling with it. 

When I was teaching more of this age group, I remember that many of them were talking about Stranger Things, and they were around 12 to 13 years old at the time. So what about Running Up That Hill by Kate Bush covering that octave of a Bb3-Bb4? And we know that Kate Bush loves a bit of head voice too. 

 I guess it's quite important to not think of this age range as boxed in or closed off to alternatives. They're going to have their influences and their tastes. They're still highly adaptable and capable of engaging with a wide range of ideas and emotional material. 

While they may be at that transitional stage between childhood and adolescence, they're able to interpret and respond to many stories and characters and themes [00:16:00] in thoughtful and imaginative ways. I mean, we only have to look at some of the child roles in the West End and on Broadway to know that these performers can actually be quite nuanced and curious and playful. 

As always, there are plenty of rep options swimming around out there, so if you catch a great fish, we'd love to hear about it. Also, if you try out any of these songs with your students of this demographic and you're like, Hey, Alexa, that's not cool then don't keep me hanging. I need to be cooler. 

But that's it from me... until next time.