Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Sing a song

I have a confession: I'm not much for lullabyes. Or kid's songs in general, really. They all seem high-pitched and pretty annoying. Plus, it's not like the lyrics are really very positive, anyway. Case in point: "rock-a-bye baby in the treetop, blah, blah, blah, down will come baby, cradle and all." Disturbing, really.

So, instead, I sing songs that I like. Tonight's musical selections included the usual: "In My Life" by The Beatles, "Sittin' on the Dock of the Bay" by Otis Redding (which has the unfortunately depressing lyric of "I've got nothing to live for, and nothing's going to come my way"--once she gets a little more cognizant, I might start skipping that part), and "Change is Going to Come" (the Sam Cooke version, of course).

Music's been on my mind lately. I've been listening to the new Kanye CD My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy on loop in the car, and I know this is not appropriate.  The lyrics are explicit, and I'm going to have to stop soon. I know she's only two months old, so I'm probably not doing irreparable damage yet, but she'll understand words soon.

Another thing I've noticed is that when I drop her off at daycare, when there aren't a lot of kids in the room yet, the teacher is sometimes listening to the pop station on the radio. Now, I get it; if I were in a room filled with infants all day, a little adult music would be a welcome background noise. (They also listen to several kids' albums). And it's the radio, so anything "bad" would be edited out. But really, does it matter if the girl in "Make it Rain" is saying "You wanna see some (silence), I wanna see some cash." The soul-crushing misogyny seems to remain in tact. Seriously, just watching this makes me sick to my stomach:



That's right ladies--setting back the women's movement one chorus at a time.

Now if you'll excuse me, my daughter just woke up, and I think I'm going to go sing "Jane Says" to get her to sleep.

1 comment:

  1. I totally agree - I find some nursery rhymes quite random and find it much harder to remember the words than words to my favourite Pearl Jam/Radiohead/whatever songs. Lately I have been experiencing mother-guilt about this mash-up:
    http://www.illegal-art.net/allday/
    It is absolutely awesome (and I love this post about it too http://www.overthinkingit.com/2011/01/12/girl-talk-all-day-best-mashups/) and it's a song that will make my little 16 month old start dancing every time without fail.... but it mashes “War Pigs” (Black Sabbath) with “Move Bitch” (Ludacris) which as you can imagine is some pretty nasty lyrics! But it's such an incredible beat, and so cute when she dances!!

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