Robert Miles: "Children" (1995)

"Children" is a single by electronica composer Robert Miles from his album Dreamland. "Children" is Miles' most successful single, being certified Gold and Platinum in several countries and it reaching #1 in more than 12 countries. Miles created several remixes himself with an additional remix by Tilt.

Miles has stated two motives for the writing of "Children". One was as a response to photographs of child war victims his father had brought home from a humanitarian mission in the former Yugoslavia; the other, inspired by his career as a DJ, was to create a track to end DJ sets, intended to calm rave attendants prior to their driving home as a means to reduce car accident deaths.

"Children" is one of the pioneering tracks of dream house, a genre of electronic dance music characterized by dream-like piano melodies, and a steady four-on-the-floor bass drum. The creation of dream house was a response to social pressures in Italy during the early 1990s: the growth of rave culture among young adults, and the ensuing popularity of nightclub attendance, had created a weekly trend of deaths due to car accidents as clubbers drove across the country overnight, falling asleep at the wheel from strenuous dancing as well as alcohol and drug use. In mid-1996, deaths due to this phenomenon, called strage del sabato sera (Saturday night slaughter) in Italy, were being estimated at around 2000 since the start of the decade. The move by DJs such as Miles to play slower, calming music to conclude a night's set, as a means to counteract the fast-paced, repetitive tracks that preceded, was met with approval by authorities and parents of car crash victims.

Billboard ascribes the final stage of the song's promotion to the airing of its music video on music television networks such as MTV Europe and Germany's VIVA. Two videos were produced, the first being the one Billboard discusses: black and white footage of a small girl riding in a car through a diverse range of landscape. The locations are London (Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square), Paris (The Eiffel Tower can be seen) and countryside in Switzerland (Robert Miles's home country), and France and Italy near the Mont-Blanc Tunnel.

The second video, filmed in colour, alternates between images of Miles DJing at a nightclub rave and images of children at play, thereby touching upon both of the themes of the song. (Source: Wikipedia)