comfort through repetition
We have so far almost entirely avoided the entire genre of "kids' music" here in the squibix household, thank goodness (though the same cannot be said for kids' television, which is a subject for another post). Starting when he was quite small I just played Harvey things that I wanted to listen to—or, at least, the subset of my music collection that I would enjoy and that wouldn't startle him too badly. That means he got more of the pop and traditional jazz end than I would have otherwise favored, but still, Bush's Razorblade Suitcase isn't the worst thing you could be listening to while trying to get a baby to sleep for 45 minutes. Better than Pachelbel's Canon, certainly.
We're off recorded music lullabies now, because he'll just listen rather than going to sleep, but we still listen to a fair amount of music. I'm always excited when he asks to hear something that I've recently introduced him to—the first couple times, at least. Like with the Soul Coughing. Even more hip 90s cred there than with Bush! But I tend not to want to listen to particular songs as often as my son does; we do have 4000 songs available in mp3 here Harvey, we don't need to listen to "Rolling" every time we're in the car. "I'm rolling I'm rolling I'm rolling?" he asks. "More Soul Coughing?" Can we at least listen to "Monster Man", please?
Of course, I know that it could be far far worse. Good music repeated ad nauseam is still good music. It's not "Bananaphone". Although if I never have to hear the Jason Mraz song "I'm Yours" again it'll be too soon. That one took off just too well. Harvey calls it "No More No Way" for some reason, and it is his first request whenever you ask him what he wants to listen to. At least, it is when his mother's doing the asking: he knows I'll have no more of that!
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I took Tristan to go see the Cornell glee club and we bought a CD there. Now we can't drive anywhere without listening to it. It got so bad one night I woke up singing "Give me regards to Davie". I'm taking him to see a Pink Floyd experience show tomorrow night so I'm hoping to be stuck listening to Pink Floyd in the car for a while.
So how was the show? Do you think it'll stick?!
The show was great. And we put on The Wall in the car this morning and he loved it. He was mesmerized by it. I forgot how soothing that music can be - maybe not a good music choice for the drive to work.
Yay! It's so nice to have music that you can appreciate together, and not just something to put on because marketing says you should.
And to add to the original post, I don't think that all kids music is bad and all "adult" music is good—certainly there's good and bad in each category. Being an old fogey with a kid, I'm just more exposed to the first one!