Late Thursday Jukebox: Songs I Sing To My Daughter

20 thoughts on “Late Thursday Jukebox: Songs I Sing To My Daughter”

1. Jack’s bedtime story for his first 18 months was the blue canary song. I like Fibber Island a lot, it’s a fun one to sing.Report

   1. Birdhouse In Your Soul is also on my playlist, though I’m not as good at singing that one.

      My friend got a blue canary nightlight. Neither made by nor endorsed by TMBG. TMBG should really make that. I would absolutely buy it.Report

      1. I have that night light in my kitchen….wait for it…in the outlet by the light switchReport

2. I used to walk baby girl around the house and sing to her until she fell asleep with a repertoire that was mainly TMBG – Birdhouse In Your Soul, Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head, Dr. Worm and Number Three were common. It’s Not My Birthday was one I actually made a recording of for my wife to play for her when I went overseas because she was so used to it (note: completely awful singing voice here) .

   The End of the Tour would have been a good addition, wish I’d thought of it.Report

   1. Memo to myself
      Do the dumb things I gotta do
      TOUCH THE PUPPET HEAD

      I’m also fond of “I don’t want the world…I just want your half.”Report

   2. Thanks to your mentioning it, Number Three has now made the rotation. It turns out I already had the lyrics to that one memorized. Birdhouse and Birthday were actually already in there.

      I’m working on James Ensor. Shouldn’t take long.Report

3. I used almost always read to the girls at bedtime. They had particular books they adored but after a while it go a bit boring for me I started to sing books to them. Fox in Socks was one they were crazy about. I would make up a tune and after a while certain books matched particular tunes. Once when James was reading to them, they requested that he sing the books as well – He tried but the girls told him he was singing them wrong. We mostly made up songs. Their favorite sung/played by James has to be Greg Brown’s Four Wet Pigs.Report

   1. Chicks with bricks come
      Chicks with blocks come
      Chicks with bricks and blocks and clocks comeReport

4. making up songs is fun.

   as far as music, outside of here come the abc’s (which is starting to destroy my mind) and one really wretched elmo book on tape (cd) tiny terror mostly listens to what we listen to. that’s starting to become an issue because his two favorite car trip songs (with me) are “angel of death” by slayer and “when corporations rule your mom” by burnt by the sun.

   at some point he’s going to know how to repeat “auschwitz” or ask why someone would have surgery with no anesthesia.Report

   1. We were in the car with the kids the other day and I wasn’t paying attention and some 90’s rap track came up on ipod shuffle…Pharcyde maybe, or Wu-Tang?

      Anyway, it has a really, REALLY foul skit/lyric, with explicit and pretty misogynist anatomical references and such…I didn’t even look to see who/which track it was, because once my brain registered what I was hearing, I was lunging for that “skip/fwd” button like Rikki Tikki Tavi going for a cobra.Report

      1. i will admit having played raekwon’s ice cream for him in the past. that kinda has to stop.Report

      2. A Pharcyde reference? *Golf Clap*

         “Your mama looks like she’s been in the dryer with some rocks…”

         Report

5. My wife is expecting at the end of March, and I have been planning out all of the songs I was going to get real good at singing while strumming the guitar. Off the top of my head, When I Paint My Masterpeice by The Band/Bob Dylan, California Stars by Wilco/Billy Bragg, and Looking Out My Back Door by CCR are at top of my list.Report

6. When my kids were little, they loved the Beatles’ All Together Now and the Kinks’ Apeman [1].

   1. In the G-rated version, the air pollution is fogging up his eyes.Report

7. OMG, I used to sing Turn Around to Alice all the time when she was a baby! I would walk around and around (and around…) our living room singing that and Birdhouse in your Soul. And If I stopped either singing or walking, Alice would shout. Jason and I had to hand her off to each other whenever she was awake. That was our life until the colic ended.

   I also sang this song (to the tune of Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah):
   Walk around the room with the ba-by,
   Walk around the room with little Alice
   Walk around the room with the ba-BY
   Until we all fall down.

   I was desperate. Good luck!Report

   1. That’s awesome! Before singing TMBG I would sing”Daddy dancing with daughter” (I can’t name the tune I associated it with. Obviously, there was dancing in addition to singing.Report

      1. Another made-up one, also from frustration, to the tune of Frere Jacques:
         Petite Alice, petite Alice (Little Alice “)
         Que fais-tu? Que fais-tu? (What are you doing? “)
         Pourquoi tu ne dors pas? Pourquoi tu ne dors pas? (Why aren’t you sleeping? “)
         Fais do-do! Fais do-do! (Go to sleep! “)

         It had a lot of verses, actually, but that was the one I always hoped I could end on.Report

      2. I will tell on myself, though, and admit that the first time I got to sing a lullaby to my daughter, I had to cry and blubber my way through it, I was so happy. Singing to my child(ren) was something I used to daydream about when I was young, and it was never entirely certain I’d ever get the chance until the day we brought her home.Report

         1. Nothing at all wrong with that. I admit, many bedtime stories and lullabyes still get me choked up to this day. Singing TMBG is and was much easier to actually get through the song without tearing up.Report

8. They Might Be Giants has always been and forever will be my favorite band. They were always mine too; nobody else ever liked them as much as I did when I was growing up, assuming they even liked them at all.Report

Comments are closed.