The state of the lullaby

Posted byEthan 2 Comments on The state of the lullaby

Anna wanted to know what my friends are singing to their kids for lullabies. I posted the question on Facebook and got about fifty times more responses than I was expecting. Since I now have all this (highly unscientific) data about lullaby trends in 2014, I figured I would write it all up. Here’s what I found.

The most interesting commonality is the song “Hush Little Baby.” Many people report singing it, and my mom sang it to me. But it’s more complicated than that. Jonathan C says:

I made up about 50 couplets of “Hush Little Baby” over many consecutive tortured hours in 2006, and somehow we’ve remembered them all and still use them. It was a good rhyming puzzle to keep me sane at night.

As soon as I read that, I tried it out on Milo, and it was super fun. I recommend it.

Rewriting the lyrics is an especially good idea because, as several people pointed out, the original song is quite depressing. “Hush little baby, don’t say a word, Mama’s gonna buy you a series of unsatisfying things that don’t address your basic emotional need.” A number of other traditional kids’ songs are similarly depressing. My mom sang me “You Are My Sunshine” and “My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean” as a kid, and while their melodies are beautiful, their lyrics are full of pain, loss, and disappointment. And don’t even get me started on “Rockabye Baby.” I sang it to Milo exactly once; never again.

Anyway, here are all the other tunes that my Facebook friends use for lullabies.

Sesame Street

PD/Traditional

  • Everybody sings “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Fun fact! It has the same melody as both the alphabet song and “Baa Baa Black Sheep” (which Jenny L has adapted to pink sheep, blue sheep, green sheep, rainbow sheep…)
  • “Kumbayah,” because my friends are hippies.
  • “The Riddle (I Gave My Love a Cherry),” which is a really weird song.
  • “The Ants go Marching” — another one that people customize the lyrics to. Ned B sings it as “the babies come crawling” like in the zombie apocalypse.
  • “This Land is Your Land” — wonder whether anyone is singing the Sharon Jones version?
  • “Froggie Went A-Courtin'”
  • “If I Had a Hammer” in homage to the recent passing of Pete Seeger.
  •  “Five Little Ducks,” which I had never heard of.
  • “Follow the Drinking Gourd”
  • “I Had a Little Nut Tree”
  • “Bobby Shaftoe”
  • “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree”
  • “All the Pretty Horses”
  • “Stewball”
  • “Havana Shira”
  • “Dona Nobis Pacem,” which is a round and presumably requires multiple singers.
  • “In Dulci Jubilo”
  • “Greensleeves”
  • Henry B recommends the Smithsonian Folkways Children’s Music Collection, which sounds like a wise investment.

Miscellaneous kids’ songs

  • “Tender Shepherd” from Peter Pan got multiple shoutouts.
  • “On Top of Spaghetti” — another one that people like to make up their own lyrics to.
  • “Orca Whale” — I have no idea what this refers to. My niece and nephew like to sing a song called “Baby Beluga;” I wonder if it’s related.
  • “Winnie the Pooh”

Motown

  • Marvin Gaye – “Pride and Joy.” Marc W says that when he started singing it, he did it as as a straight cover, but that it has gotten slower and country-er as time passes, and that “it’s basically a Social Distortion ballad now.”
  • The Big Chill soundtrack, since all of my friends are or were raised by Baby Boomers.

Miscellaneous pop and rock

  • John Denver – “Today“
  • REM – “Driver 8”
  • Guided by Voices – “Smothered in Hugs.” Chris R sings a slower ballad version of it inspired by the band Roommate.
  • Several people mentioned “Sea of Love” — I assume they mean the Cat Power version.
  • Neutral Milk Hotel – “My Dream Girl”
  • Bruce Springsteen – “Thunder Road”
  • Josh Ritter – “Here at the Right Time”
  • She & Him – “If You Can’t Sleep”
  • The 6ths – “You You You You You”
  • Velvet Underground – “I’m Sticking With You”
  • Paul Simon – “Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard”

The fifties

  • Richie Valens – “Oh Donna”
  • The Penguins – “Earth Angel”
  • The Spaniels – “Goodnight Sweetheart”

The sixties

  • Jimi Hendrix – “Little Wing”
  • The Kinks – “She’s Bought a Hat Like Princess Marina”
  • A bunch of people mentioned “Truckin'” by the Grateful Dead, which seems like a non-obvious song of theirs to use for lullaby purposes.
  • The Band – “The Weight”

The Beatles

  • “Yellow Submarine,” obviously.
  • “Golden Slumbers,” also kinda obviously. I find it helps if you skip from the second “carry that weight” chorus to “The End.”
  • “Blackbird”

Bob Dylan

  • “Billy”
  • “To Ramona”
  • “Buckets of Rain”

Classical

  • “Deh Vieni Alla Finestra” from Don Giovanni
  • Brahms’ lullaby, of course.

Jazz and standards

  • “Fly Me to the Moon”
  • “Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen”
  • “Summertime”

Musicals

  • “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma!
  • “Edelweiss” and the rest of the Sound of Music soundtrack
  • “Goodnight My Someone” from The Music Man
  • “Over the Rainbow”

Country

  • Many people sing their kids “The Gambler” by Kenny Rogers, who knew?
  • “Sing Me Back Home,” because babies don’t know it’s about an execution.
  • Dolly Parton – “Jolene”
  • Ben M doesn’t have kids, but he would hypothetically sing “How Can You Keep Moving” by Ry Cooder, which is a terrific idea.
  • Johnny Cash – “Tennessee Stud”
  • Alan Jackson – “Little Bitty”
  • Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys – “Roly Poly”

WTF

  • Guns N Roses – “Paradise City” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” (I don’t judge.)
  • Das Racist – “Combination Pizza Hut And Taco Bell” (I adore this song, but as a lullaby? Hmm.)
  • Bikini Kill – “Rebel Girl”

Made up songs

  • Mike G got tired of reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear and The Going To Bed Book all the time, so he ingeniously turned them into songs.
  • Carolyn C sings a song called “Raven And Garoushka,” which are the names of her daughter and her horse blanket (a combination blanket and stuffed horse head.) Carolyn explains, “The song is a tuneless crooning of their names, over and over again.”
  • Peg M sings “Stella Stella Bright as a Shining Star.”

Finally, here’s the lullaby rotation in our house.

  • Jazz standards: “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” “I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart,” “Dream A Little Dream Of Me,” some Monk tunes.
  • The Beatles: “I Will” and “Hey Jude” are the big ones. Sometimes “Dear Prudence.”
  • “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” which Anna modulates through many different keys, because she can.
  • “Umbrella” by Rihanna works great if you slow it down a bit.
  • Anna sings “Milo Milo Marshmallow” repeatedly to a lilting calypso melody.

What do you guys sing to your (or other people’s) kids? Please share in the comments.

2 replies on “The state of the lullaby”

  1. Hi – What a great idea for an article! I have two things to add:
    1) I sang Rock a Bye Baby to all three of my children…but…changed the words! I had read that falling is a baby’s number one fear – so the words: “down will come baby, cradle and all” seemed too cruel. My revised version is simple: “when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall, but mommy will catch you, cradle and all!”
    2) I sang Silent Night to my middle son after an excruciating struggle with his recovery from a tonsillectomy. One night, when he just couldn’t settle, I tried every song I knew (and I’m not a singer) and Silent Night did the trick!

  2. I would sing “Sleeping” by Neil Moore from the Simply Music curriculum, which I have taught many hundreds of students. Singing it freshened it for me. I would also sing Brahms’ Lullaby with my own lyrics, which would become more angst-ridden as the night wore on, which begs the question: does the meaning of the lyrics matter when the child is too young to understand them?

    Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree seems like an odd choice – too chirpy, if you’ll pardon the pun – but I would advise people to boycott it after a bloody-minded lawsuit .

    Another interesting study would be people’s favourite recorded lullaby.

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