The Deer Ninja – “Rock It”

The Deer Ninja – “Rock It” – Single Review

I mean…there are plenty of kids out there around the world, so I suppose at the end of the day there’s a potential audience for just about anything new to them, right?  The Deer Ninja stories “follow the adventures of an ordinary family as they become the unlikely heroes we all need.”  That sounds cool enough to me…lord knows we could all use a few more heroes on this planet right now to help combat all the villains running around and all the lunatics running the asylum these days.  As far as I’ve learned, “Rock It” is the theme song for one of The Deer Ninja’s main characters, named Rocket.  This is just a few of the details surrounding this project that’ll help you understand how this all came to be.  Writing children/family-based stories probably isn’t half as easy as many of you out there might think – it’s tough to find that middle ground where the content isn’t too juvenile, but also not over anyone’s head either.  Then, theoretically, you’ve also got the parents to consider somewhat as well in this equation.  I’ve got mad respect for anyone that tries to accomplish this kinda stuff, because it’s massively complex.  I wouldn’t do it, and all I’ve done for the past twenty-five years is write.  Adults are easy – kids are hard.

Like, as I was listening to “Rock It” over here, the first thing I was thinking about was whether or not my three and six year-old nieces would like it.  I know how I feel about it, but trying to conceptualize what a kid is going to respond to?  To me, that’s like throwing darts blindfolded – who knows what they’re going to be interested in next?  Could anyone have predicted they’d have been completely captivated solely by two NUMBERS (See: 6-7) last year?  If you did, you should probably be making a whole lot of bets on sites like Polymarket…you’d be making a fortune.  But you get the point…as adults, we think we have an idea of what they’ll like & what they’d be into…and truthfully speaking, most of the time we’re way off.  If only they could at least respect all the effort and appreciate the good intentions, am I right?

I’ll be real with you…I’m not entirely convinced that The Deer Ninja is completely on the right track…yet.  I think this is a good start.  I think the message is obviously good as well, and the animation that accompanies the song is also likely to be a hit with the kiddos.  You can build a whole lot around that, especially when you’re creating illustrated audio books like The Deer Ninja is…I can see that this would work in the long run for sure.  As it currently stands, I think my main concern is that the music is likely more generic than they’ve realized at the moment.  As an adult, this would be impossible to get into, because there’s not a whole lot goin’ on or any significant identity to what we hear – “Rock It” is a Rock song that could have been created by just about anyone.  In terms of whether kids will like it…again, I think if it’s introduced in tandem with the video, then sure, there’s a shot…but if this was just a song on its own, I still feel like the kids would practically be begging for something that has a lot more spark to it.  Like I said from the start, finding the right balance is extremely tough in this type of genre & songwriting – “Rock It” kind of accomplishes what it sets out to do in many respects, but at the same time, doesn’t leave us with anything memorable enough to trace it back to the source material.  That would be solely accomplished by the visuals at the current time, but that’s part & parcel of the whole project, which is good.  As far as I understand it, if you’re getting the music, then you got some illustrations or animations or videos as well…and in that regard, you’d have to assume that the kids would still tie the whole thing together.

Having said that, I think that in examining this song, we’ve found the most major points of opportunity for The Deer Ninja going forward.  I’m more than sure that their characters and their stories will have the level of identity required to make something memorable – now it’s all about creating music that has the same effect and strengths to it.  It’s obviously a great thing to have a multi-media approach (visuals, written, music) to reach the maximum potential audience, but you have to be extremely cautious about becoming the ol’ jack of all trades and master of none at the same time.  As in, if one piece of the puzzle doesn’t carry the same weight, then in the grand scheme of things, it might actually water down the impact and potency of the rest by being included – make sense?  “Rock It” still works well enough – it’s a song that has all the right pieces in all the right places and it IS cohesive enough – but the folks behind The Deer Ninja have gotta ask themselves if ‘enough’ is what they’re aiming for…and I don’t suspect that it is.  Aside from that, there’s the obvious fact that the sound itself is about three or four decades removed from what’s circulating out there right now, having more in common with late 70s and early to mid-80s Rock than it would with anything else that’s in the charts right now.  We can’t even get the adults out there to appreciate a great shredding guitar solo these days…I can’t even imagine how tough it would to get a kid interested in that.  But again, as I’ve said all along, as an adult, I have no clue as to what they would really be into…so take everything I have to say with a grain of salt.  I do think that it’s always important to establish identity in the music we make, no matter what the project is…so, that might be something that The Deer Ninja wants to take a long look at.  As in, if this IS the identity that they’re going to go with long-term…I might advise rethinking that strategy and bringing the sound of the music much closer to what kids tend to be interested in right now in what they choose to listen to.

But yeah… the fundamentals are still all there, and I think there’s a lot of heart at the core of this concept, so don’t get me wrong – I’m all for The Deer Ninja doing what it does, and of course I’d hope that it succeeds in educating & entertaining the children out there.  There’s no reason that it couldn’t be a hit with the kids…like I said at the start, you never really know what they’re going to latch onto next.

Find out more about The Deer Ninja from the official website at:  https://thedeerninja.com

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