MMMMMM... BOP!

So last weekend we headed up the Oregon coast and it’s every bit as pretty as people would have you believe. Waves, rocks, lighthouses, what have you. Nice stuff, I recommend it heartily.

While driving, Julie and I had a chance to listen to a lot of music. Of course, we weren’t the only ones listening. No, I’m not talking about the NSA, you silly, I’m talking about the two half-formed kids Julie is carrying in her new, expanded gut.

Apparently, they can hear music now, and Julie says the twins appear to be developing their own distinct tastes. One is reacting to hip hop, the other seems to prefer soul… with female vocalists. As an experiment, I played some Beastie Boys and the hip-hop twin really went nuts for it.

This is good news. I think I can deal with kids who are nerds or have odd quirks, but I really can’t respect anyone with bad taste in music. And kids tend to have really, really bad taste in music. Kids will pay good money to see a concert featuring Barney. Barney! They’ll go to an auditorium and listen to a stuffed dinosaur sing public domain songs while accompanied by a 1993 Casio keyboard. The wheels on the bus go round and round? Yes, they do, but the song about them still sucks.

Then there are the Wiggles. Don’t get me started on the Wiggles. They’re four Australian guys who wear brightly colored shirts and sing loudly about fruit salad. Typical lyrics: “fruit salad/ yummy, yummy.” We play our kids music that assumes they’re profoundly retarded, then wonder why their standardized test scores are so low. Oy.

Indeed, the vast majority of musical atrocities foisted upon mankind have been, as they say, “for the kids.” One notable exception is “The Belle of St. Mark” by Sheila E. This song written by Prince (yes, the same Prince who wrote such classics as “Sign O’ The Times” and “Kiss”) and concerns an effeminate French man who feeds pigeons and occasionally weeps. It also contains what must be one of the dumbest lyrics ever penned:

“His Paris hair blows in the warm Parisian air/
It blows whenever his Paris hair is there.”

I promise you, as you read those last two lines, you lost a few points of IQ. Kids love this song.

Apparently they also love cheezy covers of popular songs. Exhibit A: Kidz Bop 9. It’s one of the best selling albums in America right now and features popular songs sung by children… with synthesizers… and a few adult singers pretending to be the original artists… The Kidz even manage to mangle “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer,” which wasn’t exactly a musical treasure to begin with.

I know you’re supposed to love your children unconditionally, but if either of these twins ever say, “Dad, why are you playing that song by Gorillaz when we could listen to that much better version sung by a children’s choir?” I can’t rule out foster care as an option for that child.

Now I’m trying to figure out what to play for these kids to ensure we don’t have to ship our kids off to an orphanage. My mom raised me on a steady diet of Stevie Wonder, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys, and the Beatles, and I turned out awesome. So I’ve got a few more months to put together a playlist. I’m open to suggestions.