I became a dad for the first (and almost certainly only) time in March. We have a beautiful healthy son, and we’re utterly besotted with him. I was sure it would change me in some ways but had no idea how. One of the unexpected side effects was a sudden ability to spot danger *everywhere*…
It also makes me hear some music in different ways. I’ve been a huge Kinks fans for years, but while ‘Wonderboy’ might have been John Lennon’s favourite Kinks song, for me it was never more than a vaguely pleasant throwaway. And right now, it’s one of my favourite songs by anyone, and I use it to sing him to sleep because it just seems to sum up so everything of what I want for him.
What songs have taken on a new meaning for you after a life experience – parenthood / divorce / death of someone? Can you ever hear them again as you used to, and would you want to?
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This, by Francis Cabrel.
There’s a translation here which is ok but doesn’t quite catch it
https://foreignlanguagemusic.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/je-taimais-je-taime-je-taimerais-francis-cabrel/
Oh fatherhood can do that to you and will continue to do so. At every turn a song or a lyric will take on a new meaning. I remember posting here years ago about hearing “Waves” by Blancmange on the drive home from dropping my boy at University for the first time. Still brings a tear to the eye even as he approaches his 27th birthday. …
Congratulations! I also loved that song more after becoming a dad.
I sang The Beatles “Good Night” to send her to sleep for many years, she’s stopped asking for it now 🙁
And this song made me cry just after she was born:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_kiOvoloIs
A couple of years ago, a week after my mother’s funeral I was driving back to Clare alone after spending a day going through her things in her flat in Dublin. Listening to John Creedon on RTE radio. He played a song I’d never heard before – ‘Southern Sun’ by Boy and Bear. Maybe it was the way the guitar slides and soars into the chorus or maybe there’s something in the lyrics or the plaintive tone of the vocals, but whatever had been held in check for more than a week was released and I had to pull over for a break. I bought the album which I liked a lot but I’d be interested in what our Antipodean brethren think of these fellas – are they rated or seen as lightweights? However they’re viewed, I’ve loved this song ever since.
As a toddler, my eldest used to go to bed at the same time every evening – when she heard the ‘Eastenders’ theme on TV. (We used to live out foreign and ‘Eastenders’ was on BBC Prime at about 9.00 or 9.30) And every night I would put on Mozart piano concerto No.21 to help her drift off. Two very diverse pieces that remind me of simpler times 23-odd years ago. My second daughter refused to sleep until she had heard ‘Spies’ from the first Coldplay album. No. 3 had no particular preference.
Congratulations. As another late-in-the-day father (expecting number three in November), it can give new life to songs especially when they can speak or give feedback. I’ve always sang to my girls and the 3 year old has a gift for picking up lyrics. Her finest response so far is when I sing It Must be Love (the Labi Siffre version) and get to the line “bless the birds and the bees”, she adds “buzz, buzz, tweet, tweet”. I don’t have the heart to tell her it’s the wrong way round. It makes us both laugh every time.
On the other end of the spectrum, the first time I cried after my father died was driving along when Cloudbusting by Kate Bush came on the radio. It still gets me and it’s all there in the lyrics, the loss of a father. I’d never consciously play it but welcome the emotions it stirs when I hear it.
Congratulations, atcf. Life will never be the same again. I’m expecting a grand-daughter in January. My son won’t know what’s hit him.
I Am The Walrus is the one for me. I always heard it as being quite sinister, that two note siren sound and the key change at halfway with the spooky strings. As a singalong, though, it becomes a funny children’s ditty, more Lewis Carroll than Edgar Allen Poe.
Some great grotesque imagery in that song. Young kids absolutely love that sort of thing.
“Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye”.
What’s not to like?
My first child, who’s now 9, was born December 19. Spent the whole week pretty high on adrenaline and living from moment to moment. Then on Xmas Eve, with all in bed, I stood on the back verandah as the televised carols played on TV inside. I’d never paid much heed to When a Child Is Born before then, but I wept buckets of gratitude on hearing it. It all just hit me. Even typing it now brings it all back.
(The other side of that coin: she ruined the Police’s first album for me through overexposure when she was 3)