Saturday, August 22, 2009

Not Lullabies As We Remember Them


Taking a break from blogging about the adoption process to talk instead about children’s music, specifically for new born babies.

My wife and I have been looking on iTunes for some lullaby type music to download and play for our daughter. I cringed a bit when I realized that I may be downloading the same Raffi and Fred Penner songs that I’m sure I had on LP in my own childhood. While I have nothing against Baby Beluga, I was hoping there would be *some* new children’s artists that weren’t being pimped by Disney.

Luckily, we came across some amazing baby lullaby options on iTunes that, while I’m sure is part marketing-to-the-parents, are awesome: taking music we have grown up with or are listening to now and lullabying them! Below are two of the groups that provide the albums.

Rockabye Baby

Rockabye Baby has a fantastic selection of popular music that’s been babyified! Below are the links to each album’s page where you can sample the music.

Classics

Contemporary

WTF?!

Rolling Stones
Beach Boys
Beatles
Bob Marley
The Eagles
Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd
Queen
AC/DC
ColdPlay
The Cure
Green Day
Metallica
Nirvana
No Doubt
Pixies
Ramones
Radiohead
Smashing Pumpkins
U2
Bjork
Tool
Nine Inch Nails (complete with a Lullaby version of Closer)

Some translate better than others. For instance, while NIN may *sound* like a cool idea, its hard to translate the music Trent makes into a lullaby with a limited set of instruments. On the flipside, Billy Joe and the other guys from Green Day make music that translates unbelievably well!

The Rockabye site lists the CD’s as $16.95 but you can get them all on iTunes for under $10 each.

Lullaby Players

I can’t find a website for these guys, but you can find them on iTunes by entering their name in the search. They have a limited and very varied selection of artists that they’ve converted into lullabies. For instance, there’s Jimmy Buffet, Bruce Springsteen, Dave Mathews Band, and Johnny Cash.

But to add to the mix, they also have a collection of Christian lullaby albums: Casting Crowns, Third Day, Jars of Clay, and Steven Curtis Chapman.

Others Available

There’s also other compilations available on iTunes by different groups, including one that does a hair metal collection featuring GnR’s Sweet Child o’ Mine, Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn, and Extreme’s More Than Words.

There’s something very kewl about knowing my 1 month old daughter will be drifting off to sleep now with Stairway to Heaven crooning in the background. And for the record, while I did get NIN’s Hand That Feeds, I did decide to leave Closer and Head Like a Hole off of her playlist.

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