Ms. Rachel and Mr. Aron are seeing rainbows in a brand new light these days.
For Rachel and Aron Accurso, the married co-creators behind the global children’s phenomenon Ms. Rachel, the colorful subject of their new single “I Love a Rainbow” became an opportunity to go bigger, musically and visually. The playful bossa nova track is the first preview of their debut album, I’m So Happy, due Sept. 25, and its new music video — premiering exclusively on Billboard — finds the pair surrounded by Colorado mountains, polychromatic scarves, chalk-covered sidewalks and plenty of play.
But let’s not mistake all of that joy for simplicity.
The music video features an extended version of “I Love a Rainbow,” complete with a new bridge, a sweeping string section and additional live musicians. For the Accursos, expanding a song already familiar to Ms. Rachel families meant finding a way to make its world feel even bigger.
“We wanted to expand it,” Aron tells Billboard. “We wrote a new bridge and we added a big string section and more live musicians, which feels expansive.”
So, too, did filming among the Colorado mountains. But at its heart, Rachel says, the video is about “joy and connection and play.”
That philosophy sculpted the day the pair spent filming with 11 children from Colorado families. The couple took a lovely approach in having the children involved in the creative process. They didn’t direct the kids through predetermined actions, and instead allowed them to feel immersed in the music.
“They knew the song, and [we were] like, ‘What do you imagine? What do you think would be good for this next part?” Rachel says. “Just creating it with the kids and making sure they had a really special day.”
The resulting video captures children dancing with rainbow scarves and helping create a giant chalk rainbow, with those outdoor scenes interwoven with footage of musicians performing the song in New York City. For Rachel, a former music educator, putting the instruments onscreen was part of the point.
“When they hear that riff, if they see Aron’s playing it on piano or they see [someone] playing the percussion, I think it’s cool to think, ‘Maybe I could play that,’” she says. “Maybe they get an interest in guitar from seeing the instruments.”
Aron proudly directed the video himself, continuing the hands-on approach that has defined the couple’s work since the early days of their YouTube channel.
“It goes back to just us, the way we started the channel, and that it was very homegrown and creator-led,” he says.
There may have been another influence in those superb mountain shots too: The couple’s 1-year-old daughter has recently been enjoying “Do-Re-Mi” from The Sound of Music, and Aron admits the classic musical was “definitely” on his mind while the team was developing the video.
“There are little hints of The Sound of Music [in the video]: the mountain vibes, and the singing around,” he says.
The visual ambition of “I Love a Rainbow” mirrors the strategy behind I’m So Happy as a whole. The 23-track collection transforms the songs that were first introduced on Ms. Rachel into more lively studio recordings. The album features original songs and children’s classics, with lush orchestration, new arrangements and contributions from 19 vocalists and 42 instrumentalists.
For Aron, who has a background in musical theater as a composer, conductor and Broadway music director, each song required its own approach.
“It was looking at each song individually and just imagining, ‘What is the most special version of that song?’” he says. “So it was unique to each one.”
Some songs called for restraint. “Walking to the Zoo,” for example, uses a smaller ensemble, while tracks including “Caterpillar” felt capable of supporting a full orchestra.
Meanwhile, “I Love a Rainbow” seemed to call out for strings. “I thought the string section would really add to the experience and the expansiveness of the idea,” Aron says.
Rachel has her own shorthand for her husband’s musical instincts: Aron owns a shirt that reads, “I hear things.”
And, she says, “I feel like he hears things that I don’t.”
That attention to detail is central to how the couple thinks about children’s music. Rachel, who holds a master’s degree in early childhood education and music education, says children shouldn’t be treated as though they need less sophisticated art.
“Children deserve detailed, rich music,” she says. “Not just deserve, but that they do enjoy it.”
That same care extended to I’m So Happy, as the Accursos worked with engineers, live musicians and other Broadway-trained collaborators to expand the songs beyond the versions created for the show, where deadlines often require the couple to move quickly from one episode to the next.
“With the album, we were able to do more of the details or go back and do some of the things that maybe I would have liked to have done the first time around,” Aron says. “It was just a desire to dig in more with more detailed arrangements, more professional engineers, live musicians.”
The duo wants listeners to understand that children’s music doesn’t require less craft than music made for any other audience.
“I think maybe the misconception is that it is somehow dumbed down or less effortful,” Rachel says. “Children really deserve that detailed music.”
Aron adds that the pair treated I’m So Happy “with as much care as if it were a Broadway cast album.”
That care — and the emotional weight children can find in music — perhaps comes through most clearly in “Caterpillar,” a song with a personal history for the couple.
Aron wrote the track while putting their now-7-year-old son to bed during a period when he was struggling with a speech delay. Their son didn’t begin speaking until he was 2 years and 9 months old, Rachel recalls, and the family watched as he worked to communicate.
“Aron wrote this beautiful song about a caterpillar that’s struggling but keeps going,” she says.
The song can still provoke an unexpectedly strong reaction from some of its youngest listeners.
“Babies have this phenomenon where they cry at it,” Rachel says, explaining that even children too young to fully understand the lyrics seem to respond to its emotion with a sorrowful pout.
“The kids feel deeply and they respond to music, even if they don’t understand the lyrics necessarily,” she says. “They feel what went into it.”
For Rachel and Aron, that’s fundamentally the point of I’m So Happy: Children are listening more closely — and feeling more deeply — than adults may sometimes realize.
“Kids are smarter and deeper and more amazing than we give them credit for sometimes,” Rachel says.
And with I’m So Happy, Ms. Rachel and Mr. Aron are making sure the music meets them there.
“I Love a Rainbow” is out now, while I’m So Happy arrives Sept. 25 via Magic Star, the children’s and family division of Sony Music Entertainment’s The Orchard.
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