Playlist
I’m never less useful than in the half hour or so before a conference call, so I’ll go ahead and use the time to create a very useful list of My Two-Year-Old’s Favorite Songs, in order of preference.
“Dis Dat”
- AKA “Weapon Of Choice”, Fatboy Slim. So named because of the lyrics: “You can go with this / you can go with that / etc”
- Favored because Christopher Walken is an excellent dancer. Also, he can fly.
- Acceptable alternative: “Same Guy”. AKA anything else by Fatboy Slim. Except for “Shakin’ That Ass” which I’ve removed from iTunes (not really because of the lyrics, just because it’s so repetitive I can’t think of anything else for hours after hearing it.) What can I say, the boy loves Fatboy Slim.
“Roadiehead”
- AKA “2+2=5”, Radiohead.
- Favored because lots of exciting tempo changes that are fun to wave your arms around to in the car. Stellan also likes to wave his arms around in the car.
- Acceptable alternative: “Creep,” which you can sing along to by shouting “speshul!!” after every lyric. (“I wish I was special / ‘speshul’ /You’re so very special / ‘speshul’ / But I ‘m a creep / ‘speshul’ / I’m a weirdo / ‘speshul’ / What the hell am I doing here / ‘spesshullll’”. The overall effect is not entirely dissimilar to this, to the outside observer.)
“Kaygo”
- AKA this or this (“truck!”) or this (“geese!”) or this (“doggies!”) or this (“marchin band!”) but not this (“Scary!”)
- Favored because Truck! Geese! Doggies! Marching band!
- Acceptable alternative: Same videos, with the volume turned off. Just like it is for grownups.
“Countin song”
- AKA “Knee Play 1”, Philip Glass.
- Favored because you’re two years old. You’ve just discovered numbers. The lyrics to this song are “One / Two / Three / Four / One / Two / Three / Four / Five / Six / One / Two / Three / Four / Five / Six / Seven / Eight” over and over and over again. Of course this song is awesome. The bit later on where they start skipping the number one sometimes is hilarious.
- Acceptable alternative: None yet known, though I’ve been meaning to get around to trying him on π.
“Plum song” or “Peach song” or “Stellan song”
- AKA daddy makes up some random phrases about (respectively) plums, peaches, or Stellan and sings them tunelessly while waving Stellan’s arms around and/or turning him upside-down.
- Favored because it’s bedtime, and you’re a little punchdrunk at bedtime, and waving your arms around while upside-down is fun. I have no idea where the peaches or plums came into it. His mom sings him bedtime songs, so when I put him to bed he started to ask me to sing him a song, and I don’t actually know any song lyrics at all, because my hearing sucks and I can barely understand what people are saying when they talk, so forget about when they sing, so I started asking him what he wanted me to sing about and just faked it. And for whatever reason he always chooses himself, or fruit. What can I say, the boy loves fruit.
“Penis song”
- AKA “Penis Song”, Stellan Y. Beck. I haven’t witnessed this one personally, but his mother reports that the lyrics, as recited by Stellan during last night’s diaper change, are “Penis penis penis / penis penis penis / penis penis penis. Penis song. Ta-dah!”
- Favored because Penises are hilarious. Duh.
As you can probably tell, we’ve done our best to limit his exposure to “children’s” music — no Raffi allowed in this house. Because I would have to claw my eardrums out of my skull.
Also, we are terrible, terrible parents.