Run Baby Run

Album: More Please! (2009)
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Songfacts®:

  • Caspar Babypants is Chris Ballew, best known as lead singer of the band Presidents Of The United States Of America. In 2009, he started the Caspar project to make music for kids and families. "Run Baby Run" is his most popular Caspar song, a huge hit with toddlers. The song is extremely simple, just repeating a few basic lines like:

    Run baby run
    Jump baby jump
    Spin baby spin
  • In a Songfacts interview with Chris Ballew, he told the "Run Baby Run" story: "When my son was little, my first wife made this song up to keep him happy in the car. If he was fussy she would sing, 'run, baby, run, run run.' He would immediately be happy and that was very dramatic and noticeable.

    That was in 1998, '99. It wasn't until almost a decade later that I really settled into making music for families, and I absolutely remembered the power of the tool that the song became - it because a useful thing. So the overarching purpose of me making music for families was to expand on that idea of making songs that weren't just funny and clever, but also parents would love them, kids would love them, and they would be useful to alleviate stress for families.

    It was a very intense, hard, writing process for that project. It was just revision after revision after revision to make something that sounds like it took me five minutes to make. But 'Run Baby Run' was an obvious song for me to go ahead and record for real."
  • This is a great live song for Caspar Babypants because he can customize the lyrics and take suggestions from the crowd. He'll often throw in the line, "poop baby poop," which gets a good laugh. He usually plays the song last because he can adjust it to hit his off time.

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