Last month was rock music, whereas this month, we’re mostly in dance music territory with Robert Miles’ most well-known song.
January marked 30 years since the original release of the song Children, by Robert Miles, in Italy. It went on to become one of the most iconic songs in dance music, creating a new, short-lived genre known as ‘dream house’. It was designed to be played as a more chilled track as the last song before closing at nightclubs, to help clubbers calm down and avoid getting into road accidents when driving home.
Miles sadly passed away in 2017, but over the years Children has been covered and sampled many times. Here’s a non-complete list – alas, some of the songs I wanted to include aren’t available on Spotify. The playlist is on Spotify if you want to listen along – I’ve mainly included the original or extended mixes where available, so it’s a longer playlist than normal.
- ‘Children’ by Robert Miles. We’ll start with the original song. What most versions have in common is the piano tune, but many also sample the guitar melody as well.
- ‘Children’ by Tilt. This cover version followed in 1999, and took the song more in a trance direction. It’s also much longer at over 10 minutes. I bought the CD single of this, although I think I leant it to someone who then didn’t give it back.
- ‘Children’ by 4 Clubbers. Another trance remix that followed a little later.
- ‘Children (Future Breeze vs Junkfood Junkies Remix) by 4 Clubbers. There was also a remix included with the above single, which is more well-known. This more of a glowstick waving, hands-in-the-air track.
- ‘Children 2012’ by Jack Holiday and Mike Candys. This was an electro-house cover version.
- ‘REACT’ by Switch Disco featuring Ella Henderson. This song from a couple of years ago heavily samples Children, but adds lyrics written and performed by Ella Henderson. It’s one of our nine-year-old’s favourite songs.
- ‘Closer’ by Bou. This also came out a couple of years ago, and was in the UK Top 40 singles chart at the same time as React. At the time, one in four songs in the top 40 sampled other songs.
- ‘Children’ by Tinlicker. This seems to be the most recent cover of the original song, from 2022. It slows the melody down slightly.
- ‘Rollin’ by Jackie Chain and Kid Cudi. I found this through the excellent WhoSampled.com. Not my preferred king of music but you can hear Children sampled throughout. This came out in 2009.
Missing songs:
- ‘$timulated’ by Tyga. It is on Spotify but seemingly not available to stream in the UK
- ‘Children (Mandrake Remake)’ by Mandrake. Another trance cover from 2003, which I have on an old Euphoria compilation album.
