Rockabye Baby Turns 20 With a New Paramore Lullaby Album

Rockabye Baby, the lullaby series that has racked up 4.5 billion streams by reimagining the catalogs of artists like Beyoncé, Metallica, and Billie Eilish, is marking its 20th anniversary with a new album built around Paramore.

Co-creator and executive producer Lisa Roth spoke to Billboard ahead of the release, and the origin story is genuinely good. In 2006, a frustrating baby shower shopping trip sent Roth back to the office at CMH Label Group with a pitch: get into the baby business. Her first three releases were lullaby renditions of Radiohead, Coldplay, and Metallica. Nearly 130 albums later, she admits she never saw this coming. "I had no idea it would be going two decades later," she says.

Paramore was a deliberate choice for the anniversary milestone. Roth cited the band's cultural weight, their female-fronted staying power in a male-dominated industry, and the practical reality that their core fanbase is now at peak parenting age. The Paramore lullaby album covers the band's catalog in full, and Roth expects "Misery Business," their 2007 Billboard Hot 100 charting single, to be the standout.

How Rockabye Baby Actually Makes a Lullaby Work

The process is more labor-intensive than you'd expect. Roth and her team plan releases about a year out, balancing legacy artists with current names and tracking fan requests along the way. After clearing mechanical licenses through publishers and rights holders, producers rebuild each arrangement from scratch. Tracks go back and forth between producers and Roth, sometimes more than a dozen times before anything is approved.

The key instruction Roth gives every producer says a lot about what makes the series work: "I want you to produce this as if you have a newborn baby in your arms while you're doing it. I want it to sound and play out in a way that would never disturb a sleeping baby, but I want you to keep the original intention of the artist who created that song."

Slowing a track down is not the move. Roth is clear on that. The recognizability of the original has to survive the arrangement, or the whole thing falls apart. That balance is what keeps parents actually listening instead of just tolerating it.

The audience has grown well past new parents too. Yoga instructors, dog owners, people who want background music that isn't elevator noise, and yes, music industry executives hosting dinner parties have all found their way to the catalog. That crossover speaks to something the series figured out early: nostalgia and function can live in the same place.

What This Means for Independent Creators and Music Licensors

Rockabye Baby's model is a useful case study for anyone working in music licensing and catalog development. The series built real commercial scale from a niche concept by respecting the source material and staying consistent over time. The fact that they're clearing mechanical licenses across nearly 130 albums and working directly with publishers makes this one of the more operationally complex boutique labels running.

For independent artists watching from the outside, the takeaway is straightforward: catalog longevity and thoughtful licensing partnerships can open doors that straight streaming revenue never will. If you're building something with a long-term vision and want to get it in front of people who think about the business that way, [submit your music here](/submit).

The Paramore lullaby album is out now. Watch whether it brings a new wave of younger parents back into the Rockabye Baby conversation, because that kind of generational handoff is exactly what keeps a catalog brand alive for another 20 years.