NEW YORK (AP) — Parents of toddlers everywhere, prepare yourselves. YouTube sensation and music teacher Ms. Rachel and her husband, Aron Accurso, will release their debut album, the 23-track “I'm So Happy,” on Sept. 25.
“Music is such a wonderful way for people to bond, for parents to bond. I know from the minute my kids were born, we’re singing to them,” Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, said.
Ms. Rachel launched her mega popular YouTube channel in 2019 with her husband, known online as “Mr. Aron.”
“I am a music educator, so I get excited about kids hearing a real clarinet on ‘Icky Sticky Bubble Gum’ and kids getting excited about hearing more real instruments,” said Ms. Rachel.
But that isn't the only education they'll get from the album. A song like “I Could Be Your Friend” gives kids a script for bolstering their social skills. “We’re always thinking about all kinds of kids, whether they have disabilities, whether they’re autistic,” she said. “We just want the world to feel like it’s helpful to all children and the musical worlds as well.”
The songs aren't limited by genre, either. Take the single “I Love a Rainbow” as an example: It's a big bossa nova number. Their take on the classic “Old McDonald” leans bluegrass.
“Music is at the heart of our show,” added Aron Accurso. “And so, we’ve always wanted to release the music and have families experience the music away from the screen.”
“I'm So Happy” was co-produced by Accurso and Grammy winner Scott Riesett and principally arranged by Accurso. He reimagined a number of Ms. Rachel's fan favorite songs and childhood classics with a team of 19 vocalists and 42 instrumentalists.
“It’s songs that people know from the show, but we decided to expand them and elevate them with new arrangements and reproducing them,” Aron Accurso explained. “It was a process of, you know, looking at them and saying, ‘OK, what else can we do to this to make it sparkle more? What can we add to it? What does it need to be on the album?’”
He says they most hope that the album will inspire “living room dance parties, because that’s what we love with our children,” he said. “We love to put on an album and dance around.”
Ms. Rachel has made headlines over the last few years for using her social media platforms to advocate for global humanitarian crises, with particular attention given to the plight of children in Gaza and those detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Most recently, she shared comments about the mysterious death of 18-year-old Nolan Wells in Mississippi, a case shadowed by the state’s fraught racial history and lingering distrust in law enforcement.
“We know the investigation and everything that followed would have been different if Nolan Wells were white and his friends were black. Nolan and his family deserve justice,” she wrote on Instagram.
Ms. Rachel says she knows her album may bring attention to her advocacy and vice versa. “I view myself as an advocate for children’s rights so anytime they’re being violated by anyone anywhere, I want to be speaking out,” she said. “I want families to be happy and safe and healthy, and I think that’s a wonderful thing. So, if it’s brought up with the album, that’s great.”
1. “I’m So Happy” 2. “I Love a Rainbow” 3. “Icky Sticky Bubble Gum” 4. “Phonics” 5. “Hop Little Bunnies” 6. “Caterpillar” 7. “Up and Down” 8. “Bubble Pop” 9. “Walkin’ at the Zoo” 10. “Open Shut Them” 11. “I Could Be Your Friend” 12. “I Listen to My Body” 13. “The Wheels on the Bus” 14. “Dino Play” 15. “Pop Those Bubbles” 16. “Old MacDonald” 17. “If You Should Meet an Elephant” 18. “Counting to 20!” 19. “B-I-N-G-O” 20. “Lobby Loo” 21. “Big Feelings” 22. “Together” 23. “I Love You to the Moon”
FILE - Honoree Rachel Griffin Accurso (aka Ms. Rachel), and husband Aron Accurso attend the Glamour Women of the Year Awards at The Plaza Hotel, Nov. 4, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
BUNIA, Congo (AP) — At least 2,000 people have died in Congo’s Ebola outbreak, the fastest-growing on record, according to the latest data, as health authorities struggle to get help to remote localities due to rebel conflict, bad roads and work stoppages over payment issues.
Government data published overnight into Tuesday showed the outbreak has recorded a total of 4,381 confirmed cases, including 2,011 deaths. A total of 704 patients are in admission and isolation.
The outbreak was declared on May 15 but health authorities say sequencing showed it began months earlier, in February.
While it took about nine weeks for the outbreak to record the first 1,000 deaths, it’s taken just around three weeks for the figure to double, an evidence that the health crisis is moving faster than efforts to track and manage it.
It's already the second-largest outbreak in history, only behind the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak that recorded more than 28,000 cases including over 11,000 deaths.
The Ebola outbreak is unlike most previous ones because the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for it has no approved vaccines or treatments. Clinical trials for those have begun in Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, in eastern Congo.
Aid workers say the outbreak continues to outpace response that’s been expanding across the five eastern provinces affected. Many health workers have gone on strike to protest lack of payment for their work since the outbreak was declared. And WHO has said most new cases are still being recorded outside of contacts being monitored, showing that transmission remains out of the control of health workers.
Ebola can be caused by different types of virus. Although the type responsible for the 2014-2016 outbreak is considered the deadliest, government data shows this Bundibugyo outbreak has killed a higher percentage of people as care and support are not getting to patients quickly enough. Many cases are reporting symptoms late or not at all.
The ongoing outbreak has so far had a case fatality rate of 45.9%, more than the 39.6% rate recorded in the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak.
“In the absence of an effective vaccine, control (for the outbreak) rests on identifying cases and then nursing them in secure facilities until they recover or sadly perish,” said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia in the U.K.
In a remote region like this with an ongoing conflict and interrupted communications, routine surveillance can be very difficult and “identifying cases early enough to prevent spread can be impossible,” said Hunter.
The World Health Organization said on Monday that at the onset of the outbreak in one of Congo’s most remote and vulnerable areas, some cases were wrongly attributed to malaria and typhoid, and that early testing was conducted for the more common type of Ebola.
The WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, told a news conference that officials are “chasing the virus, the virus is ahead of us.”
The first Ebola virus to be identified was in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. The current outbreak is the 17th — and largest — the Central African nation has faced.
A health worker dries boots that were washed to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
A man arrives at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
A health worker in protective gear washes her hands at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
A health worker on the dignified and safe burial team, monitors a casket at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
A health worker waits to be sprayed with disinfectant at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
A health worker in protective gear walks at an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
A health worker in protective gear looks on at an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
A health worker in protective gear prepares to mop the floor at an ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
Health workers in protective gear wave inside an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)
