Bye Bye Lullaby

You CAN stop the music. Apparently.

 John and I have always sung to the kids at bed time, sending them off to the Land of Nod on dulcet waves of softly crooned lullabies.

With Jack, my train-obsessed boy, I could do no wrong with a little engine action via Morning Town Ride, the Thomas theme song and, at Christmas time, a medley of both popular and historical carols. In fact, even at age 9, Jack still insists on a couple of tunes before I'm allowed to leave the room each evening.

But that's it! I am only allowed to sing at night, in the dark, and very quietly. At any other time, singing from Mum is not allowed. I'm not sure whether it's because my singing is embarrassing, or unpleasant to the ear (gasp!), or he's just envious of my fabulous singing voice (possible but unlikely!), but Jack really, really dislikes me singing along to the radio in the car, the ipod in the kitchen or ANY OTHER TIME. He tries to be polite about it, bless his Catholic-school-manners, but judging by the way he cringes/grinds teeth/leaves room/turns radio over, my singing voice is somehow equivalent to nails on a blackboard to my first born.

Which is fine. I'm still the boss of him so I'll sing if I want to. Suck it up kid. Besides, I have to put up with his endless (ENDLESS I TELL YOU!!) renditions of Gangnam Style so I reckon a little pay-back is in order.

But it makes me wonder, is my voice less melodious and more malodorous?

Evidence For The Defence

When I was 11, I sang Christmas carols and strummed along on my guitar at the family Chrissy bash and my nan told me I had a lovely singing voice. That, in itself, is a winning testimonial but it gets better.

When my aunt then questioned where I got my lovely singing voice from because "it couldn't be from her mother", my mum took umbrage and, well, let's just say that ensuing events culminated in half the family walking out and going home while I plaintively warbled 'Away In A Manger' amidst the rapid disintegration of Christmas cheer.

So people actually FOUGHT over my lovely singing voice. I bet Beyonce couldn't lay claim to that!

In somewhat more convincing evidence, I have regularly been able to achieve SINGSTAR status ($$ka-ching, ka-ching$$) on the PS3. And everyone knows you can't argue with Singstar. It's not your Nan. It doesn't care if your feelings are hurt. It tells the TRUTH goddammit!

Evidence For The Prosecution

When Francesca came along, I decided not to tempt fate. I got in early by singing to her while she was in utero and I sang to her from her very first day out in the world. I went with the ultimate silky-voiced songstress, Norah Jones. The song of choice? 'Come Away With Me'. She LOVED it. It would always calm her down.

But then somewhere along the way, it didn't.

In fact, she would hear the opening lines "Come away with me in the night" and she'd get upset. I maintain it was due to the association of me singing that song and imminent cot-time. That song equalled being put to bed and was suddenly anathema.

Way-hay! I thought. No problemo! I'll just start the good ol' winning combination of train and Christmas songs. But no. Francesca now speaks. As soon as I start singing, she yells "NO MUMMY SONGS. DADDY SONGS!!" and continues to chant "DADDY SONGS! DADDY SONGS!!" until John comes in and rescues her from Mummy's shitty medleys and crappy singing voice.

Good grief! Is that why she came a week early? She needed to get the hell away from 24/7 contact with my voice?! Or do all kids hate the sound of their mother's singing? I bet JLo's babies cry when she sings. Really. I bet they do.*

So John sweeps in with his deep, melty Kamahl voice and croons a blend of Gordon Lightfoot, Bruce Springsteen and the Beatles and she freaking loves it! In fact, he has to go back in for an encore every single night. And even after the encore, she's still calling "DADDY'S SONGS!" like some demented One Direction fan.

Meanwhile, I shuffle off to drown my wounded vocal chords in sauv blanc and, in a little while, I smile smugly to myself. Neither John, nor Jack, nor Francesca have ever beaten me in the independent, unbiased, all-knowing, very-clever game of Singstar. Ka-ching!


* Don't take that bet. Please. I beg you. Just agree with me.

What Was Your Cradle Music?

Recently, Apple celebrated the release of The Beatles catalogue on iTunes by filling the screen with a big picture of the lads from Liverpool.

Just seeing them pop up like that, so unexpectedly, led to a lump-in-throat moment.

I love them. I can't quite put my finger on why I feel so emotional about the Beatles, but there it is. Love me do? I do, I do! Cute Paul, Dreamy George, Edgy John, Funny Ringo. And the music? Sheer brilliance. I mean who else do you know could get a chart-topping hit out of the lyrics "I am the eggman, they are the eggmen, I am the walrus, goo goo g’joob"?

The only explanation I can think of for my deep, unconditional, completely irrational love of the Beatles, is that their songs were my cradle music.

My teenaged parents, having taken a tumble in the back of a car on summer holidays followed by a hastily arranged (but lovely and ironically reverent, with altar boys and everything) wedding, decided to name the resulting daughter, moi, after a song from the Beatles Rubber Soul album. It could have been much worse; Tom Jones released Delilah that same year. And how lucky for me to be born to teenagers in the 60s and not today, although Mi$helle has a nice look to it, non?

As a small child I spent hours on hot Saturday nights lying on the cool linoleum floor just inside my bedroom, peeking out through the door into the room where my parents and their friends (still only in their 20s I'm amazed to reflect on now) danced and sang the night away to an endless stream of EPs on the record player, my father swinging my mum around to Elvis and Johnny O'Keefe, Frankie Valli and Gene Pitney. A particular favourite of Dad's, Lovers Concerto by The Toys, became an anthem for my childhood. I still love it and it evokes memories of those Saturday nights gazing at my happy dancing parents when the frustrations of raising three children on a single wage in the 1970s melted away in a wash of moselle and paisley halternecks and doing the twist in a suburban Melbourne lounge room. The nights always ended in a loud and boozy singalong to Unchained Melody.

When Jack was in utero, John was having a love affair with Unchained Melody and played it loudly in the car on every single car trip for months towards the end of my pregnancy. Despite, at the time, wanting to take those lonely rivers and dam them, I had cause to be grateful to John because whenever Jack was unsettled in the car, we only had to release the lonely rivers to the sea and he would shut up and listen.

Jack has since moved on, latching on to certain songs from our own collections. And when Jack loves a song, we all get to hear it many, many times to the point where a previously favoured tune is at risk of having the same effect of nails dragged down a blackboard. We have had, on rotation ad nauseum, everything from Rock The Boat (Hues Corporation) and Big Girls Don't Cry (Frankie not Fergie) to Apple Bottom Jeans and Super Trouper. And of course there are the endless round of lullabies we still sing every night - Gordon Lightfoot and tunes from My Fair Lady from Daddy, Morning Town Ride and a year-round Christmas medley from Mummy.

"Eclectic" doesn't even do this kid's musical tastes justice.

But he saves his best moves for his one true idol, the gloved one, he of the indecipherable lyric, Mr Michael Jackson. We don't even have to go out to get our groove on in this household cos once MJ is on the turntable we spend the night in Frisco, in every kind of disco, bedazzled by a cornucopia of crotch grabbing and moon walking.

I blame it on the boogie.

And now it's Francesca's turn. She will get the same off-key but enthusiastically sung lullabies as her siblings and will no doubt be moon-crawling in a few months. We put Big Girls Don't Cry on in the car for a joke once when she cried and she shut up and listened so that is now our fallback song in the car when she's crying say, in the queue at the drive-in bottle shop or in the car park of the pub while I duck in and drop ten bucks in the pokies.

Most nights she kicks and sucks her fists happily in her bouncer while I'm cooking dinner, the iPod on shuffle, imbibing her musical heritage - Blondie and Bowie, Lily Allen and Lenny Kravitz, Nick Cave and Nina Simone, Madonna and Missy, Rod and Robbie and yes, John, Paul, George & Ringo.

So how about you? Do you have a song or a style of music that always resonates with you, from when you were a child right through to your adulthood? Is there a song that, whenever you hear it, takes you back to a feeling or a memory of safety, warmth, a sense that you've come 'home'? Do tell.

I'll leave you with the lads and a song for John and my children. I will.





Image courtesy of iTunes