Anything on the radio is fine. Be prepared for an insane amount of requests for the same songs over and over again.

Play radio edits of Billboard top 100
Read your crowd, if you are comfortable do some mic work pump up the School and the event.

Be ready for kids standing against the wall and girls texting away on their phones.

Is Hip-Hop ok? I saw that both of you stated radio and top 100. I obviously don't want to play anything to risque, but if I can what type of songs would you suggest?

Try to stay away from songs that promote sexual acts - condone alcohol - drug use.
You'll be fine Type Two, stick to your local radio station top 20's and READ your crowd.

Good luck!

Plus, if you can, play the SUPER/SQUEAKY CLEAN versions. Cleaner than the Radio version.

lol@ playing the radios top 20 hits and at the same time not playing sexually suggestive songs.

Is that even possible.


PS. Them kids are gonna ask for the dirtiest shit ever. Last one i did kid was requestion doo doo brown, he wasnt even a sperm when that song was out.

rofl!

Man, I would've been blown away by a request like that from a 12 y.o.!

LMFAO!! Yal are hilarious! Thanks for the help!

Just played a 14 y/o bday last week. Most requested:

wobble
mercy
paris
wobble
wobble
wobble
bottoms up
gangnam style

even the most "pretty" top 40 ie katy perry - last friday night which is basically about menage a trois sex and getting hammered is gonna have some lyrics just keep it clean. all the kids basically did anyway is shout out the explicit lyrics over the clean anyway. for "old school" kiddo music they surprisingly went apeshit over crank dat. maybe throw in thriller too and see if that works (usually does for me). i usually have more requests in the "urban" realm but since most top 40 is basically uptempo not this time. they really are easy gigs if you don't get sensitive about the amount of requests and playing the same shit over and over and not really worrying about mixing.

i played a middle school grad. party couple years back and there was a line of like 50 kids single file to make requests but it wasnt so much me playing bad music as it was the kids wanting to be cool and come up to do it. easy $ yo.

Had a kid request "Yo, you got that Bad Boys 2 soundtrack" a few years ago.

I hate it when 100 kids request the same #1 song at the moment.

Just did a wedding and the attending pre-teens/teens asked for:

Hot Tottie- Usher
Boyfriend-Beiber

I tossed in a "Baby" - Beiber and "Party in the USA" - Miley Cyrus for good measure. All songs killed.

A lot will depend on the demographics there. Details man...

Urban area

2 Chainz all day. Oh yea and Twerk music

There's a hot one out that all the kids love..

Blunt Smokin' Booty Grindin' Ma-Fuggn' Gangsta Killa

Don't worry - it's clean!

You have to know where your at! One of my first jobs was a school on the "West Side" and I played almost everything. Teachers, parents as well as kids enjoyed the music and danced non-stop.

The same year I hooked in to this MS (kind of affluent, kind of elitist) and I playd "Low" and "Move, Shake, Drop" and immediatly had chapperones, come and ask me not to play "suggestive" music. The PTA President even came up and asked me not to play songs, "So, rappy" (True story).

You have to know your client(s). I complied w/ their requests and flooded them with Taylor Swift and Jonas Brothers, etc...and since then, this community has been my biggest money maker. My son does all the "teen" and "tween" parties now from this community and he's booked up for Fall and Spring every year since.

Echo on the dirty requestors - I get tons for Eminem, Lil' Wayne, ZeRo, etc.... I shake my head and tell them I don't have the clean versions.

Tyga - Make It Nasty

Id deffo try to squeeze in some Black Sabbath, & maybe some NWA.

Yo - DJ Type Two - I heard them middle school kids love to get down to a bit of Buju Banton. Boom Bye Bye goes down a TREAT

Roger that! I'm a middle school teacher myself and always have to shake my head at the stuff kids put into their wears these days. I do edit my music beyond what the radio offers and try my best to read not just the kids, but the parents, chaperones, and staff. I had to interview with a Catholic School principal once to get the gig. Since then I've been their DJ for 5 years now. Good luck with the middle school jobs. They can be tricky, but also tons of fun if you pull it off right!

Man... Kid events can be murder.

I've had kids in elementary school singing dirty lyrics on top of instrumentals, and the parents will look at me sideways like I'm encouraging it. I'm playing instrumentals to AVOID this.

I swear, these events set you up to fail. There's very little you can play to keep kids happy and not upset parents who think their kids don't know that crap back to front.

This is why I went to EDM...

Party rock anthem_lmfao
Moves like jagger-maroon 5
Gamgnam style-psy
Cupid shuffle-latin version,its double time
Back in time-pitbull
Work out_j.cole
Girl on fire-alicia keys
Diamond-rihanna
Cha cha slide
Atl remix
Yeah 3x-chris brown
Die young-kesha

I have done tons of parties all over,they hav pushed me around before
Not this time
No requests taken
I plan on keeping them busy with homemade hula hoops out of irrigation pipe

Call me maybe-carly rae jepsen
Glad u came-wanted
Stronger-kelly clarkson
We found love-rihanna
Anything by one direction
Sexy and I know it-lmfao
Good feeling_flo rida
Whistle-flo rida

^^ Yup, just did one last Friday and it was the exact same! ^^

U can play cool remixes of the top 40 songs so u dont get bored, ive had good gigsnwhere ive done it.

I always end with Steam "Goodbye" It gets 'em every time!

i did a 6th grade end of the year party at a middle school, and some of the songs that i thought were clean, werent....lol

i had to literally sit and listen through my whole playlist of songs and make cue points on the songs that were radio friendly and still had some non school friendly stuff in them

example: bruno mars - lazy song: "meet a really nice girl, have some really nice sex"

your best bet is to play alot of the stuff that is on the "NOW Thats What I call Music" cd's. Thats what alot of those school kids are listening to. (unless your doing a gig at a school in the hood) lol - then it's Trinidad James, Travis Porter and Khia - My Neck & My Back...all day...lmao

Radio Friendly ain't always kid party friendly.

The one thing I hate about doing kid parties is it's never a case of trying to keep the kids happy. Trust me, those kids know EVERY SONG THERE IS.

It's a case of trying to keep the parents not mad.

Ive had great success with kids parties the key is a good MC to do two things one get all the wall clingers to dance, and to block requesters. One school dance i had 100% of kids dancing and chaperones, teachers, and the principal after a few moments of him trying to leave the room... One of the best gigs ive had when everyone is dancing..

True. These kinds of gigs can be real successful (everyone dancing and having a good time). Or... they can drag on 'cause no one wants to put down their cell phone!

My mc is crazy with it though, hell be like "cut the music! " everybody on the dance floor! Then all girls that want to dance drag everybody out and boom! Haha good times :)

I usually MC myself. I find the younger they get, the harder it is - especially as the younger ones are more and more driven by radio and music videos. The worst ones to play for can be the elementary school aged kids as it's a case of playing kid friendly songs, but nothing cheesy. Then at that point, it's a case of trying to keep the parents happy and the kids from getting bored which is crazy because the kids most of the time don't want to dance so much as they want to mingle around (this is just a fact). So, most of the time, they'll dance for a bit on a chorus or intro (especially if they've seen the music video or know a dance to it, but throughout the verse, stand around and/or return to mingling.

I've even had one parent come up to me and say "you're losing your crowd." I told her on the spot that I wasn't losing them and I didn't "need to play some club music" as she so astutely pointed out. Soon as the chorus hit, the kids were moving again. Mixed in next song. Kids kept moving throughout intro and chorus. Verse hit, mingle. It was like clockwork. Frankly, she just didn't like the music as she was bored and wanted to hear some stuff for herself. Oh well.

Then there's middle school where you can open up more of what you can play... but there's over-aggressive chaperones (many of whom are school staff) trying to keep students at least 2 feet from each other. I have to admit, it's hilarious.

Then there's high school where you're pretty much free to play whatever keeps the kids happy, but the kids by this point are radio programmed machines and want to hear nothing but it; and they get bored easy so don't expect to play it like it's a club, go 2 verses, and mix out on the chorus. Those songs better fly fast. Don't be surprised if you've got one long history list at the end of the event. This pretty much will last all the way through the freshman / 1st year sophomore college kids.

^^ True enough ^^

I did 73 songs in two hours the other night. Based solely on the above principles!

I do find the elementary grades most fun though. I can get away with everything from Elvis to LMFAO. I do mix a lot of oldies and popular cartoon/movie themes (Schrek for example). Parents can be the nightmare! Most of them are younger than me now and still want to be in the clubs themselves.

Id pull out the NOW Series for this one lol

I haven't played anything like this for a long time, but I think Papa Midnight's comments are bang on.
They'll go crazy for the hook and parts they know, or songs that have a 'set dance' to them and then stand around in between. Especially younger guys, as doing a non scripted dance is just potential for them to get embarrassed.

Endless requests are definitely a signature of the under 16 crowd too, 90% for the exact same song and then the obscure ones. One of my best one- from a 11 year old girl "do you have the ghostbusters theme song?" MC sarcastically asked me if I had it.....Had a remix that broke down into it, just played it from there and it went nuts.
Just have fun with it, you may be surprised what works, especially if you can mix properly- bad choice and you can be out of it quicker than they know what the song was.

Definitely second the comment about 'clean' tracks too, I've used autoplay to do the part of these jobs where nothing is really happening and ended up sprinting at the laptop to cut off a song as I listened to it and thought "hang on, the next line is ................."

LOL. Happens to the best of us! Gotta be quick on the edit button!

Luckily whenever I have made that mistake the people have been pretty relaxed and just agreed when I pointed out the kids probably swear more than any of us.

You do see a lot of strange things though, teachers that stand right in front of a speaker, block their ears and give you dirty looks. One of my favourites was the lady that thought the fog machine was really smoke and we were going to choke all the kids.
Fog machines at these gigs are an interesting one, I usually would give it a good blast when I first start because it tends to draw them onto the floor. There are always two or three kids that just then stand in front of it the entire night trying to signal you to put more out, or come creeping around to try and find the button.

:) I always get "Can you turn down the fog? So-And-So has asthma." Lady, you hired me to do a laser show (with fog) for 300 screaming teenagers. This topic had been covered before in a different thread, but you're right - the fog machine is always a point of contention. It's not like we're burning wet leaves in a bucket or anything. These things are safe you know!

A teacher did what you described and stood right in front of the speaker. When she asked me to turn it down, I reminded her that I am here for the kids and THEY like it loud! Then proceeded to turn it up to... 11.

Iv'e got some basic ideas for what I need to play at my next gig. Its a huge dance that I'm not joking you the whole school and more goes to. Last year, I had the kids break dancing, jumping off staircases and trying to hang from things. Literally one kid climbed on a table and tried to hang from the stairs and when the teacher told him no he jumped off and started breakdancing. Someone hit a locker. Somebody lost their shoe. Yeah. It was awesome. I need 2016 stuff that is not about smoking or twerking. Poor kiddos know the words and some even like that type of music but adults are like heck to the no.

Check out
schooldancenetwork.com

Great site for school appropriate music. Good luck! Sounds like a fun time.

clean top 40 and check out youtube (and I am done).

haven't found a venue that allows foggers in the past 5 years.

this is why I edit a lot of my songs.