I am hard at work at the “Top 20 Rock/Pop Songs for Kids” list, which involves me locking my children in a room, playing music and saying “Do you like this?” many many times (and saying things like “How the hell can you not like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit?’”). I expect to have that posted soon (I have 20 songs but there are other candidates to try). But I want to flag some songs that are definitively NOT on the top 20 list.
Sympathy for the Devil - Rolling Stones: I thought they’d be into the “woo hoo”’s, but my son informed me that this was “not rock and roll. It is Jungle music.”
Loser – Beck. I tried this one, getting them to put the L symbol with their thumb and forefinger on their foreheads and everything. They just were not into saying “so why don’t you kill me.” Self-preservation instincts apparently out-muscle the ability to enjoy self-expressed irony, at least through age 8.
Anything by 7 Seconds or Fugazi - My kids reject Straight Edge music. No black X's on hands are in their future, apparently.
But the real purpose of this post is:
Puff the Magic Dragon – Various Hippies. Knowing that you’ll have to give up something you love may be something that’s going to happen to you in life. I get that. But that doesn’t mean its fun to sing about, and it certainly isn’t fun for kids. If I released a song titled “Sex might be fun now, but in a few years, when you’re old, sex will become rarer and not nearly as much fun and eventually it will be awful,” then no one would expect a hit. When it wasn’t a hit, I couldn’t say “but it’s about sex!” So why do people think kids will like Puff, which might as well be titled “Kids! You Know How You Like to Imagine Things? Well, When you Get Old, You Will Desert Your Imaginary Friends, Such as Puff the Magic Dragon, and Those Imaginary Friends Will Cry!” What the fuck? Was their next song “Santa Is a Fake! In 4 years you Will Learn This!”
So the entire theme here is ridiculous and inappropriate, but then there are the details. What the fuck is “Honah Lee”? Why is Puff all psyched about being given strings and sealing wax? I know, I know, HAHA the song’s about pot. Puff is apparently building a bong or something. But seriously, this song was not written in 1740 when presents like that might’ve somehow been cool. This is addle-brained hippie nostalgia for something I’m not sure they understand.
Go and read the freakin’ lyrics to this song and tell me that this song has any place on a kids’ album. The claim to this being a kids’ song is that its mellow (which hippies think kids like, but kids don’t actually like… mellow makes kids tired, which their parents like, but kids really don’t) and that there is a dragon in it. But it’s not a very cool dragon. It doesn’t breathe fire or kill or fight anybody, so it might as well be a mule or something (ok, ability to transform into a boat is a little bit cool, but only a very tiny bit). And just because there’s sex in my proposed song above doesn’t make it a Barry White standard.
My kids don’t like this song and I don’t blame them one bit.
Sympathy for the Devil - Rolling Stones: I thought they’d be into the “woo hoo”’s, but my son informed me that this was “not rock and roll. It is Jungle music.”
Loser – Beck. I tried this one, getting them to put the L symbol with their thumb and forefinger on their foreheads and everything. They just were not into saying “so why don’t you kill me.” Self-preservation instincts apparently out-muscle the ability to enjoy self-expressed irony, at least through age 8.
Anything by 7 Seconds or Fugazi - My kids reject Straight Edge music. No black X's on hands are in their future, apparently.
But the real purpose of this post is:
Puff the Magic Dragon – Various Hippies. Knowing that you’ll have to give up something you love may be something that’s going to happen to you in life. I get that. But that doesn’t mean its fun to sing about, and it certainly isn’t fun for kids. If I released a song titled “Sex might be fun now, but in a few years, when you’re old, sex will become rarer and not nearly as much fun and eventually it will be awful,” then no one would expect a hit. When it wasn’t a hit, I couldn’t say “but it’s about sex!” So why do people think kids will like Puff, which might as well be titled “Kids! You Know How You Like to Imagine Things? Well, When you Get Old, You Will Desert Your Imaginary Friends, Such as Puff the Magic Dragon, and Those Imaginary Friends Will Cry!” What the fuck? Was their next song “Santa Is a Fake! In 4 years you Will Learn This!”
So the entire theme here is ridiculous and inappropriate, but then there are the details. What the fuck is “Honah Lee”? Why is Puff all psyched about being given strings and sealing wax? I know, I know, HAHA the song’s about pot. Puff is apparently building a bong or something. But seriously, this song was not written in 1740 when presents like that might’ve somehow been cool. This is addle-brained hippie nostalgia for something I’m not sure they understand.
Go and read the freakin’ lyrics to this song and tell me that this song has any place on a kids’ album. The claim to this being a kids’ song is that its mellow (which hippies think kids like, but kids don’t actually like… mellow makes kids tired, which their parents like, but kids really don’t) and that there is a dragon in it. But it’s not a very cool dragon. It doesn’t breathe fire or kill or fight anybody, so it might as well be a mule or something (ok, ability to transform into a boat is a little bit cool, but only a very tiny bit). And just because there’s sex in my proposed song above doesn’t make it a Barry White standard.
My kids don’t like this song and I don’t blame them one bit.
2 comments:
I'm with you. "Puff the Magic Dragon" bums me out. They have that song in rotation at the kid's play space where I take my son and I wish they didn't.
They also play vintage Disney music. "Some Day My Prince Will Come" sounds spooky to me.
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