I am missing the lullaby gene.
I realized this when we were up at my parents’ house a few weeks ago. My sister was there, too, and she and my mom were trying to comfort the baby, who was wailing. (It was 8pm. Wailing is what Poppy digs most at 8pm.)
I walked into the kitchen and saw my mother and sister standing with the baby, my mom holding her, my sister leaning over to her ear, the two of them singing “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” in a sweet, slightly off-key serenade.
“Huh,” I thought. “It would never have in a million years occurred to me to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”
Not that I don’t sing to my daughter. In the middle of the night in Poppy’s first few weeks, when she would cry inconsolably when we tried to put her down, I would sing to her every night. In those dark, lonely hours, though, the only songs I could reliably remember the words to? “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel (nice kid-appropriate lyrics, self!) and “Iowa” by Dar Williams. (Oh, and one night, an ill-fated attempt to remember the words to “Closer to Fine” by the Indigo Girls, which taught me that (a) I don’t actually remember all those words and (b) that song sounds a LOT better with 2-part harmony.)
But mostly just “Cecilia,” over and over and over again.
I do not offer this as a fake-self-deprecating but actually-self-congratulatory suggestion that my kid is above kids’ music, or that we are somehow cultivating in her Excellent Music Taste from day 1. On the contrary, Poppy listens to a wide variety of deeply unhip music. But we don’t own any kids’ music yet, and since one of the only reliable ways to calm her down is dancing to upbeat tunes, we have to make do with what we’ve got. To date, her favorites include:
- “Raise Your Glass” by Pink
- “Only the Good Die Young” by Billy Joel (“Don’t listen to him, Poppy,” John whispers at her while party boy Billy tries to persuade the young Virginia to drop her pants.)
- “Little Pink Houses” by John “Cougar” Mellencamp
- “Toxic” by Britney Spears
- “Hard Core Troubadour” by Steve Earle
- “Love the Way You Lie” by Rhianna and Eminem (another for the “Please, God, let her never remember these lyrics, even subliminally” list)
- “Low” by Flo Rida (featuring T-Pain) (particularly good for dancing/quad exercises while holding baby)
- “Excursion Around the Bay” by Great Big Sea
- “Hooked on a feeling,” “ooga chakka” version (please do yourself a favor and watch the video featuring David Hasselhoff, if you haven’t before.)
- “Party In the USA” by Miley Cyrus
So, as you can see, Poppy’s music taste is not particularly discriminating. Drop a beat and girl is good to go. Now please share with me those songs that you find useful for baby dancing. Our short playlist is getting a little tired.
Oh how I love Dar’s Iowa.
I am not a singer. At all. Have never sung my kid to sleep for fear of permanently damaging her. But Cecilia is one I have sung to her in goofy moments since she was a wee lass. Except I use her real name instead of Cecilia. Still inappropriate but fun.
Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate is a HUGE favorite around these parts.
Sam’s favorite song is You Are My Sunshine. Maddie’s used to be 1234 by Feist.
I recommend the Feist/Sesame Street version of 1234 on YouTube. Mesmerized this child for MONTHS. I don’t even know if his eyes could focus yet.
We used to sing Addy “Sweet Caroline” substituting Adelay for Caroline. To both the boys, I have sung “Danny Boy” substituting their names. Both deeply uncool, obviously. I also sing Christmas carols a lot, because for some reason I can always remember the lyrics to those even when the words to lullabies fail me.
Awesome taste your kid has in music! My girls favorites currently include Nirvana and Led Zeppelin with alittle Smashing Pumpkins mixed in for good measure.
The Feist/1234 is actually like, a really really lovely song. A huge hit here too.
I couldn’t remember nursery rhymes and would sing Theo Christmas songs as a wee babe. They were the ones I knew! To this day his favorite is Silent Night and we still sing it to him every night at his request.
You Are My Sunshine is another good one.
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Haaa! You can sing anything to a newborn, obviously. The tricky thing is when they start requesting songs about, say, grapes, as though you sing them a song about grapes all the time and it’s time to do it again, but there IS no song about grapes to your knowledge so you have to make it up and then it becomes a favorite even though it goes:
First you take a grape
And then you put it in your mouth
And then you eat it
And then you eat it
And then you take another grape
And then you put it in your mouth
And then you eat it
And then you eat it
Grapes are yummy and we love ‘em in our tummy
So we eat ‘em
That’s why we eat ‘em
So you’re probably better off than me. I mostly make up really really bad songs to traditional melodies. And also Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ra and also You Are My Sunshine.
I have not danced a baby to sleep in a long time, but do recall Eternal Flame and Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors working quite well. There is another “song” that works with every single baby, but I can not get it across in written form (sorry). It is Ahh ahh Pop-py, over and over, in a very specific melody. I think they like it because it’s so repetitive that they know what’s coming, and older babies/toddlers like it because it’s their name.
For some reason, Britney Spears cracked me up. Poppy is going to be dropping it like it’s hot in no time.
T sings songs, in Swahili, of all things; so how am I supposed to compete with that? Instead, I dance. Which doesn’t do much good when trying to get them to sleep, but based on my moves–does distract them enough to stop them from crying/tantruming/anything else.
I always think that when I’m singing to my niece, I’ll sing something sweet. But it’s usually a rap song. In a sing songy voice.
“I throw my hands up in the air sometimes, saying ehh-ohhh…”
Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” makes a good lullaby.
Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry are big in our house. As well as, “Jingle Bells, Batman Smells”.
Wow you have quite a mix for little Poppy. You can always gold old school and use Tina Turner’s Big wheels keep on turning. the Hair whips may stun her into silence and seal the “mommy is cool” factor
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach (especially Super Fast Jellyfish) is excellent baby-bopping music.
Also, if you remember it, the theme song for Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was excellent calm-down-the-baby fodder.
My baby was born in November, so the first few months were covered with christmas carols. I tried to sing a rock a bye baby to him yesterday while I was nursing and he reached up to grab my mouth. Apparently not a big fan of the mama singing in that moment.
I had a playlist for Z that included:
Don’t Know Why–Norah Jones
Blackbird–any version, just a beautiful song
Anything by the Sons of the Neverwrong
Aint No Sunshine –Bill Whithers
For a beat, Z still gets fired up for Beyonce’s “all the single ladies”
I’m way late to comment on this but I couldn’t resist – I LOVE the songs that you’re singing! We tend to sing some random songs to our guys, too. The worst I’ve done, though, was sing “Hotel California” to my niece back in the 90s. Yes – a song about drug addiction to a newborn. She ate it up, though.
I was also excited to see some love for Great Big Sea! My husband’s family is from Newfoundland, and we adore them and “Excursion Around the Bay”. His grandmothers were both born in the Harbour Grace mentioned in the song, and his parents grew up on an island in the bay around which they’re going on the excursion (Bell Island, Conception Bay).
My extremely inappropriate lullaby is “Forget you”, by Cee lo. Mia particularly likes the “She’s an X-box, I’m an Atari, but the way you play your game ain’t fair” line. At least I sing the radio version!