Rockabye Baby!

When I was still pregnant, I remember visiting my sister's house to spend time with her and her 1-year old son. We were hanging out in his room, talking about life (which was hardly much seeing as I was 8 months pregnant and she had a one year old), and my sister said,"Let's put on some music!" and I thought to myself, I like music...and then all of a sudden I heard what can only be described as a chorus of precocious, asking-you-a-bunch-of-questions-all-the-time sorta kids singing in that shout-slash-whine as they so often do, "Old MacDonald Had a Farm." My sister was clapping and singing along while my nephew, who was totally into it, was jumping around smiling his little face off. And me? I was trying to slit my wrists with the baby safe nail clippers.

Why does children's music have to be so super annoying?

I decided, right then and there, that this was not going to happen in my house. I didn't see any reason why my daughter couldn't listen to the Cure, the Smiths, the Clash - or anything else that I liked for that matter. These songs have great melodies and catchy hooks and I was about 99.9% sure that my daughter's first words were not going to be Girlfriend in a Coma. Maybe Love Cats, but I could handle that.

I still wanted to look around and see if there was anything else out there that a mom-like-me and a girl-like-her could listen to and still retain our indie street cred. That's when I found Rockabye Baby! records.

Essentially, the original copyrighted material of such artists as Beach Boys, Björk, Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, The Ramones, Queens of the Stoneage, The Beatles and many, many more are stripped down into lullaby renditions. The music is beautiful and honestly, it's one more way to appreciate an artist that you already love while soothing your little thumbsucker at the same time.

I love it when someone looks at me incredulously and asks me,"Is that 'Karma Police' by Radiohead?"

Indeed it is!

- Kim