Apparently the "Mozart Effect'' theory, which held that listening to Mozart sonatas would somehow increase your child's intelligence, has been debunked over the years.

I didn't know this. I didn't keep current.

And I've been making my daughter listen to Phantom of the Opera. It's not a sonata, exactly. But it seems to me that it should qualify as classical music, and as music that would increase a child's intelligence, simply because it's a soundtrack that instinct tells you your child will hate.
And things children hate generally equate to things that will make them smarter.

Yet she loves it. She asked for, even, when I was playing Radiohead.

"That music is getting in my head. I don't want it in my head.''

"What do you mean, in your head?'' I asked.

"It's getting inside my head. Just play the Opera.''

Phantom of the Opera, that is.

I've gotten interested in children's musical tastes, though I haven't heard very many personal stories about this. I really wonder: Is the love of cheesy music a lifestyle choice, or are you born that way? Are some kids just not into music at all?

My son is so un-musical it's just weird. He's in sixth grade, but he never listens to music. He doesn't play the radio or have a favorite band.

And I can' t understand it, because my life would never have been the same without Donny and Marie Osmond. I was a cultist, really. I Donny-worshiped.

I played piano, I listened to Abba, I sang French songs as a street urchin in a professional production of Carmen when I was my son's age. (And I'm not a good singer, my husband often tells me. But his "singing'' is more akin to howling.)

Lily, the 5-year-old, loves the cheeseball stuff. Abba, Elton John, the Bee Gees.

She was singing to the BeeGees' "Jive Talking'' last week.

"Jiiive donkey,'' she sang.

She calls rap music "crazy music.'' And as I said, she thinks Radiohead invades her brain, in a bad way.

I really wonder if I've overly influenced her musical tastes because she commutes with me. Or whether she was born loving easy listening.

* * *

Unrelated strange question from Lily: "Do you know how to play the guitar while you're driving?''

And even stranger question from Creed: "If you could grow a beard, would you?''

bw