How I learned to stop worrying and start loving cheesy music
Beth Miller, who blogs on the wonderful Small Pleasures (tagline: "Chuntering about life and parenting in Lewes"), has sent along this missive about the effect of children on her heretofore impeccable taset in music. Hint: they don't improve it. She writes:
You can't stop the music, nobody can stop the music
Everyone knows that pregnancy turns stony-hearted kick-ass women into saps who weep at cute liddle Pampers adverts. But that’s as nothing next to the transformations wrought by parenthood. For me, one of the most remarkable has been my changed attitude towards - how else to put it? - shite music.
Pre-children, I was a purist, some might say an avenging purist, who would only listen to music in the best possible taste. I had been known to turn off other people’s car stereos, without asking, when Celine Dion slithered onto the radio; to break off relationships over Bryan Adams; and to leave an otherwise very good party because the host insisted on sharing his Marillion collection. (Actually I still feel rightly indignant about that.)
It’s not just cheesy music that does it for them. They are utterly eclectic, like mini-John Peels. They listen in a completely unguarded way, and thus respond to all kinds of everything: upbeat tempos (‘Rock Around the Clock’), songs which start quiet then go loud (‘It’s Oh So Quiet’), songs with lots of words (‘The Revolution Will Not be Televised’), and songs which Mummy can do a silly dance to (‘Baggy Trousers’). They just don’t have my snobbery about what’s good and what’s not. And when I’m with them, nor do I.
This means that I’ve found myself agreeing that the Carpenter’s ‘Song For You’ is ‘really brilliant’ (then turned my face to wipe away a sentimental tear). I’ve laughed along with them to ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’, a dirge which used to make me throw things. I’ve even printed out the lyrics to ‘The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow’, so we can sing our own acapella version more accurately. Accurately is used in its loosest sense here.
What I find most interesting is the way that I am not, in fact, faking it. Because they’re so interesting to me, the little tousle-headed mop-tops (my kids, not the Beatles), I often like what they like, just cos they like it. Charlie and Lola, Ben 10, earthworms, fishfingers, and now, uncool music. Because it gives them such enjoyment, I have somehow not just accommodated to it – I actually sort of like it too.
Having children has brought me to a new place, an unexpected place. A good place, for I am clearly more likeable now than when I harangued friends for the state of their record collections and boycotted pubs with U2-heavy jukeboxes. Actually, if they start to get into U2, I really will be torn. It’s all very well, a certain softening, but kids do still need to be taught right from wrong. - Beth Miller
More on Alpha Mummy:
Have I made my children too scared to rock?
Kids' music you can actually stand
