We were lucky to catch up with Shawn Thicke recently and have shared our conversation below.
Shawn, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I knew pretty early on that I wanted to be a performer. When I was three years old, I wanted to be a magician. I would take my mom’s cassette tape carrying case, place it in the middle of our living room, stand on top of it, and pretend to do magic tricks to an invisible audience. I would wave my imaginary wand and shout “ALLA PEANUT BUTTER SANDWICHES” and pretend to make a rabbit disappear. I would get down, take a bow, and redo this over and over for hours. I was serious about it until I realized I was lousy at actually being a magician. It was when I started getting obsessed with music as a teenager that everything shifted. The first time I envisioned it being a reality was when I was twenty years old. I had been singing and playing guitar in bands for two years but on this particular night, everything just went right. I had organized a gig at a bar called Clyde’s to raise money for a volunteer trip to Ecuador, and almost everyone I knew showed up plus more people that they had invited. It was electric. I felt more present than I ever had as if I wasn’t even in my body anymore. From that moment on, I knew that this was what I was supposed to do and I’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.
Shawn, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Shawn Thicke, but I go by the stage name of Shawny. I’m a children’s musician, performer, and YouTuber from Montreal, Quebec. I have been working with children for the entirety of my professional life, and I previously worked as an elementary school music teacher for 8 years. I first got into this business in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. I had been playing in bar bands for over ten years and decided to try my hand at writing children specifically for children. I started sharing my songs with my students and seeing how much joy it brought them, especially during such a difficult time, I decided to pursue a professional career. I created my own YouTube channel called Shawny Kids Music and before I knew it my music videos started catching on with audiences outside of my classroom. I now have over 1,000,000 million views on my channel. In 2023, I quit teaching to become a full-time children’s performer as the demand became too great. I have performed hundreds of times at daycares, schools, libraries, birthday parties, festivals, and public events. I released my debut album “It’s So Sunny” that same year, which addresses themes of acceptance, kindness, and hope. My newest album “Go Go Stop – Music & Movement for Kids” which was released on May 16th, features music and movement-based songs that have themes of empathy, inclusivity, and kindness.
I believe that as a children’s musician, I provide educational, musical, and entertainment value for my clients. My clients are ultimately children, though I also work with educators, administrators, librarians, and parents to provide the best possible experience for these children. As a performer, I’m providing them a safe space, where they are free to have fun and learn that music is a positive aspect of their lives and their development. By creating albums and music videos, I’m ensuring that they can turn to my music even when I am not performing for them. My music and performance style is warm, energetic, and fun. Children often see my persona Shawny as a friend that they can trust. I think this is what makes me stand out. I am always at their level and never condescend to them. I am very in touch with my inner child and as such I don’t come off as fake or performative. I take being silly very seriously. Children need to see that adults can be silly and open to new experiences just like them. When someone hires me or listens to my music online, they are always in for an engaging and immersive experience. They are just as much a part of the music-making process as I am. I do not believe in singing to or at children but always with them.
I am proud of a lot of the work that I have done over the years, but I am probably most proud of the live performances I have put on. The sheer joy that I see children’s faces when we are playing music together is why I do what I do. I have a song called “I Love Me (L.O.V.E)” and it’s a call and response in which children have to sing back to me “I love me/L.O.V.E/It’s not always easy/it’s hard to do/I love me/The same way that I love you”. When I see children singing that back to me and I see that they mean it, that makes my heart soar. Giving children that confidence is what I am most proud of.
That’s the main thing I want my fans to take away from my music. When you are with Shawny or listening to Shawny you are in a space where joy, fun, imagination, and kindness are encouraged. It can be a cruel and cold world out there, and it can be easy to get cynical as you get older, but you have to hold on to that warmth and creativity that you naturally have as children. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to others too. Don’t be afraid to be silly and to have fun. That’s really what the Shawny brand is all about; playfulness and kindness.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
The biggest pivot I ever took was when I decided to make music for children instead of for adults. For the entirety of my 20s, all I wanted to do was to be the lead singer in a rock band. I wanted to tour, make albums, and bare my soul to an audience. No matter how hard I tried, it just never worked out. By the end of my 20’s, I felt stuck. It had been my dream for so long and I didn’t know what else to do. I had not made any noticeable strides in years and I was starting to lose hope. For the entirety of this period, I had been working as an elementary school teacher. One day, a fellow educator, made an aside about how I should write a song to help the children learn how to get their winter clothes on. It was like a lightning bolt went off in my head and I realized that being a children’s musician didn’t seem farfetched, in fact, I thought I could very well thrive. A seed had been planted. Once the pandemic hit in 2020, I knew that playing in bands was not realistic anymore especially considering there was nowhere to perform. So I tried writing a few children’s songs and shared them with my students via Zoom. The response I got from that changed everything for me. I quickly realized I wasn’t wrong to want to be a musician and a performer, I had just been playing to the wrong target audience. I had to pivot because of the pandemic and my need to be creative but it’s a decision I’m glad I made. Children light up when I perform in a way adults never had. Making that change was one of the best decisions I ever made.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In 2021, I was almost ready to give up on being Shawny. Everything started to go wrong all at once. My videos were losing a lot of traction. Even my students didn’t seem that interested anymore. I was beginning to lose confidence and worried that my time was up. What’s worse is I fell for the oldest scam in the book. A parent had reached out to me to write a song for their child’s birthday and was offering quite a lot of money for me to do it. It wasn’t even the money that got me hooked, it was that someone liked my music enough to want my help. It was a songwriting challenge too. I wrote the song and even filmed and edited a video specifically for the child’s birthday. Of course, it was a total scam. When they paid me they had accidentally overpaid. They asked me to send back the money they had overcharged and I complied. That is when the original check bounced and I realized I had lost a sizeable amount of money. I tried getting it back but of course, I never would. Losing the money was hard, but finding out this person wasn’t real was much harder. I felt awful. I experienced horrible writer’s block for months and the thought of never making music again made me depressed for quite some time. I thought that my adventure as a children’s musician was short-lived. I tried one last thing. Once my depression started to become more manageable, I started writing down how it had felt during that time. Not only was it cathartic for me but I recognized that there might be a song there. I didn’t put any pressure on the song but just made it for myself. Once it was done I realized the song now titled “The Day The Colours Went Away” would be perfect for children. We were still having lockdowns at that time, and you could see the despair that the children felt over having to be isolated all the time. So I decided it would be for them and would eventually release it as a single in 2022. I still have people come up to me and tell me how much that song meant to them and their families. It gave me the confidence I needed to keep going and follow my dream. I try to remember this experience whenever I feel self-doubt. I’m proud that I gathered enough strength to write that song even when I thought I would never write anything again.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.shawnykidsmusic.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shawnykidsmusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shawnykidsmusic
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shawnykidsmusic/?originalSubdomain=ca
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@shawnykidsmusic
- Other: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6UQdKIPUvChMN0Xj6wFnNu?si=9m1dMEIRSpOoM6gFgYSN4g
Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/ca/artist/shawny/1621785131
Image Credits
All photographs were taken by Kyran Thicke.