Kids Don’t Love Terrible Music, They’re Taught To
You can’t blame the youth for the bad music they’re exposed to.
The recent New York Times headline “Why Do Kids Love Terrible Music” underestimates kids’ ability to develop their own complex musical tastes.
The article argues that children latch onto tunes like “Baby Shark” because of their natural affinity for repetitive music, easy-to-understand lyrical themes, and a bit of subversion. It seems to me that this is generally true for adults too.
Music is cultural. In the same way that Americans tend to reinforce the bias that pink is for girls and blue is for boys, the music kids listen to is based on the musical environment around them, and parents have the biggest impact on that.
As a musician and DJ with young children, part of my parental responsibility is to provide my kids with musical experiences. Yes, we’ve had our share of singing “Wheels on the Bus,” “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” and other Rafi songs. We’ve seen Dan Zanes live a couple of times. His tunes are on the tolerable end of the children’s music spectrum. But my wife and I have also been intentional about exposing our kids to the music that we like, and it turns out that the kids like our music at least as much as the stuff that’s supposedly made for them.
From infancy, the lullabies we sang to them at bedtime included tunes like the South African turned American folk song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” The Beatles’ “Blackbird” and Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” I’ve built a Spotify playlist called “ Love Songs, Lullabies, Laments “ that we sometimes use to help soothe them to sleep and It doesn’t contain any music that was intentionally made for kids. As the Times article points out, the themes in music that kids relate to are the same themes that are the components of most popular music.
Our kids have been to Frozen-themed birthday parties, so they’re aware of it, but we keep that overly saccharine soundtrack away from our playlists. They’ve heard “Baby Shark,” but the closest thing to it that comes out of our speakers is the Jamaican dancehall version by RDX called “Mek We Dance.”
Essentially, our tactic has been to keep the kids away from the music we don’t want to hear. They’re perfectly happy to hear the tunes that we enjoy, and that way we all enjoy them together. In fact, each of our kids has their own playlist on Spotify that I add tracks to when they say, “Dad, can you add this one to my playlist?” All of them are tunes I was listening to for my own enjoyment in the first place, so I’m always happy to listen to their playlists with them when they ask.
There was an interesting moment last year when another child from our school got into our car and asked, “Do you have that ‘Poop-Diddy-Scoop’ song?” “You mean that Kanye tune, ‘Lift Yourself’,” I replied. “Yeah, that one!” they said. I put it on and all three of the kids in my car were bouncing around in hysterics. It made me ponder whether Kanye had intentionally made a kids song. Whatever the case, all the kids and adults in the car were thoroughly enjoying the music together. (Note: this piece was written before Kanye espoused his love for Hitler etc. We no longer listen to his music.)
In the same way that kids need guidance when it comes to screen-time or food choices, when parents provide a steady diet of interesting musical options with guard rails, kids learn to like “good” music from a very young age.
Originally published at Mini Music Critic on November 29, 2019
