It is one of the great and solemn duties of parents to ensure that their children don't grow up listening to terrible music.
Parenting experts say that you can get going with your musical brainwashing even before the baby is born, placing earphones on a pregnant belly to pump in some techno for a little fetus fiesta. I guess it's like a rave in there except with less sticky goo.
When the kid finally gets yanked down the slippery slide of life it's time for the real work to begin. In the early days the babies were soothed when we played them cute little ditties and lullabies sung by friendly Prairie ladies who like to wear denim vests. It certainly worked - those little guys could be crying so hard in the backseat of the car that you'd think we'd done something despicable to them like take away their iPhones, but the moment the "hop hop hop little bunnies" song came on they'd be whisked away to baby pleasure island (which I assume is just like normal pleasure island except with more excavators).
The only problem is that while my kids found those songs relaxing, I, as the driver of the car, instead found it soothing to eject those CDs and Frisbee them out the car window into the ocean.
When this became a pattern, I knew I needed to change my kids' listening habits to closer match my own. And as a parent there are other musical responsibilities to take into consideration, most notably Bieber-avoidance.
No offence to all the Beliebers out there. I'm sure that when Justin is not speeding through playground zones in his Lamborghini or wearing leather pants or talking to judges or making his bodyguards carry him places or generally interacting with members of the human species, he's quite a delightful person. But I just don't see the magic in his music and I'm hoping my kids will develop tastes similar to mine.
It may be a tough battle. Bieber's "Baby" is the second most watched video in the history of YouTube with more than one billion views. That's nearly four billion minutes that humanity will never get back.
Now I'm no war correspondent but I think my journalistic courage and dedication to the truth is evident when I say that in the course of researching this column I watched the entire "Baby" video from start to finish. Well, I lasted at least a good 45 seconds, but I'm sure that was enough to get the gist of it.
The song is. .. um. .. well it's been viewed a heck of a lot of times. Other than that, I can't really remember a thing about it except that Justin didn't look like a psychopath yet and he said the word "baby" approximately once per YouTube view. All this is to say that as my boys grow up I hope they go for music that is a little more eclectic. And I'm going to do everything I can do to make sure that happens.
Parents play a large part in influencing their children's tastes but not the whole part. My parents were a mixed bag. There were some questionable choices - I remember a lot of Roger Whittaker, and there was that year when my mom played A-ha's "Take On Me" so often that I started to think the synthesizer was my father. But there was great stuff too - they loved The Band, The Animals, The Guess Who, Queen. My tastes now follow those bloodlines with just a bit of old school gangster rap thrown in: Blam blam, blam to dem all. And so forth.
My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a house where there was never any "popular" music played. All she can remember is listening to classical music or full-length productions by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Jesus Christ Superstar, how are we still married?
Somehow my wife fought through those shackles and emerged with surprisingly decent musical taste, and together we are now doing our best to ensure that our family soundtrack never gets boy banded.
I started early, dancing my first boy to sleep to Beck, Blue Rodeo and The Rolling Stones. Soon enough he learned to dance and talk and sing for himself and started requesting his favourites. First it was Gordon Lightfoot, then Neil Young, and now it's Fleetwood Mac's "Second Hand News," Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now," and Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" that get him and his little brother dancing no matter the circumstances. There have been a few questionable faves - a little too much Billy Joel for my taste - but all in all both of my boys seem to be on the right path.
My oldest, who is now three, confirmed his musical acuity a couple of weeks ago when I decided to play him Nirvana for the first time. Now don't go calling child services on me - it wasn't one of Cobain's screamy songs but a nice acoustic number from their unplugged concert. My boy gave it a listen, let it soak in a bit and then, completely unbidden, said: "I like Pearl Jam better."
Alright kid. Keep on rockin'.
Contact Andy at [email protected] to let him know what songs your kids can't get enough of. Nothing sung by a purple dinosaur please.
