Rockabye Baby!

Sending babies and their hip parents off to a restful slumber since 2006, Rockabye Baby! is a popular series that issues collections of instrumental lullaby versions of songs by well-known rock-era artists. Kicking off with inaugural sets of Coldplay, Metallica, and Radiohead songs, Rockabye Baby! went on to cover artists ranging from the Beatles and Bob Marley to Björk before the end of the decade. Highlighting their gentle arrangements, often featuring keyboard and bell-type tones, the series' first compilation, Good Day, Goodnight, appeared in 2011. Releasing upwards of a half-dozen albums per year, Rockabye Baby! paid tribute to Prince in 2012, David Bowie in 2014, and Tom Petty in 2018. The line had its biggest commercial success to that point with 2017's Lullaby Renditions of Justin Timberlake, which hit the Top 20 on Billboard's Independent Albums chart.
The brainchild of Lisa Roth, an executive at Los Angeles-based CMH Label Group (and sister of Van Halen's David Lee Roth), the Rockabye Baby! series was launched on August 29, 2006 with the release of Lullaby Renditions of Coldplay, Lullaby Renditions of Metallica, and Lullaby Renditions of Radiohead. Over time, a variety of performers would join the fold, but Andrew Bissell and Steven Charles Boone were among frequent early contributors. Word spread of the series with the release of collections of songs originally by groups like the Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, and the Cure through the end of the decade. In 2011, the five-year-anniversary collection, Good Day, Goodnight, included several previously unreleased songs alongside a double-album's worth of selections from prior releases.
Rockabye Baby!'s popularity grew throughout the 2010s, and they eventually charted with 2017's Lullaby Renditions of the Doors, which reached number 25 on the Billboard Kid Albums chart. They went all the way to number seven later in the year with their Justin Timberlake collection, which also reached number 18 on the independent albums chart. Lullaby Renditions of the Beastie Boys peaked at number eight on the kids' music chart in 2018, and in 2019, their covers of Weezer returned Rockabye Baby! to the number seven spot. ~ Marcy Donelson & Neil Z. Yeung