Children’s music: A danger to your mental health?
In The Three Martini Playdate, a brilliant diatribe on surviving parenthood with all your sensibilities and culture in tact, Christie Mellor includes a chapter called “Children’s Music: Why?”
She, like many parents, could see no need for Barney, Big Bird, Raffi or any of the rest. Having listened to more children’s music in the past seven years than most people hear even snippets of in a lifetime, I can tell you with certainty: She is absolutely right. I reached a point when I simply could not listen to another album by Tom Paxon, Tom Chapin or any other Tom, Dick or Trout Fisher in America playing a guitar and singing clever ditties for kids, usually with a moral.
Don’t get me wrong, there has been some really good music made with kids in mind. Laura Kelly noted several I missed in my last music-related post, including brilliant albums by Jack Johnson and They Might Be Giants. There’s one more album I really need to add, one by various rock musicians called For the Kids. Proceeds of this album benefit VH1’s Save the Music Foundation, which supports music programs in schools.
For the Kids features Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik getting down on a song about frogs called “Hop Hop Hippity Hop.” Silly as it sounds, that song made me a Five for Fighting fan. Hootie and the Blowfish’s Darius Rucker, the Semisonic’s Dan Wilson, Barenaked Ladies, Billy Bragg and Wilco, Tom Waits and Dan Zanes all make appearances on this album. All great stuff, but the one cut that will make you not mind listening to this over and over with your kids is Sarah McLachlan’s heartwarming rendition of "The Rainbow Connection."
So, you see, there is good music made for kids. But, for the most part, you have to be careful, otherwise, you end up feeling just like this description from Christie Mellor’s book:
“There is a very real mental health danger to bad music that is rarely mentioned: The melody and lyrics will get stuck on a continual loop in one’s head, often for weeks at a time. … What little sanity you have left will slowly crumble; you wil soon find yourself making smiley-faced pancakes, collecting colorfully costumed teddy bears, and decorating with plaid. … Avoid bad music and you avoid an insidious and downward descent into sheer blandness.”
So, unless you can pick something good in kids' music, stick with your tried-and-true. When they're little, your kids can love the blues or Led Zeppelin or hip-hop or Phish just as much as you do. It doesn't matter what music you play for them, they will end up liking stuff you hate anyway. Mine, for example, like all those Disney Channel stars. Gak.
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