Baby Playlist

The Baby Photographer

Sympathy Pains

Published on Wednesday, 05 March 2014 13:00

Last Updated on 07 March 2014

Michael Shilling

0 Comments

A few weeks ago all of my wife’s pregnancy apps started telling us that baby can hear now. The general consensus from all of these apps are that we should sing to our unborn child.

Strangely there’s nothing about discouraging parents from reading the Daily Mail out loud but I guess that’s just common sense.

I’m by no stretch of the imagination a vocalist but in my twenties I did have a thing for thing for singing Sinatra at the karaoke.

My wife thought it was a good idea to put me in the spot and told me “Sing to your baby”. At the time I couldn’t think of any songs that I actually knew the words to so I just hummed a few.

To help me out in future I’ve created my own playlist and here it is.

 

1. Escape

A.K.A. The Piña Colada Song. As catchy as this tune is it is rather morally dubious. The song is basically about a man who tries to cheat on his wife by replying to a lonely hearts advert in a newspaper. The women he meets to escape with turns out to be his wife and they have a good laugh about it.

 

2. Somewhere beyond the Sea.

As former merchant seaman my wife and I had this played during our first dance at our wedding. Strangely a cruise line used this in their adverts. It’s a song about escaping a life at sea.

 

3. Black Steel.

The Tricky version of the Public Enemy hit. You might consider this inappropriate but it’s just one of those songs that keeps on popping into my head and I just happen to know all of the words.

 

4. Theme From The Fresh Prince of Bell Air.

Who doesn’t know the lyrics to this? Perfect song for parents who live in a rough area but have siblings that are rather well off and intent to offload their children to them to avoid the difficult teenage years. Between us we have 7 brothers and sisters so it’s not a totally unrealistic option if our daughter starts sounding like David Weir.

 

5. Arthur’s Theme.

“When you get caught between the moon and New York City…….” The ultimate power ballad and one I’m sure my neighbours are sick of hearing at 11pm.

 

6. The Frog Princess.

The Divine Comedy’s 1994 take on the popular fairytail. Possibly another inappropriate choice but it’s a belter.

 

7. Somewhere only we know.

Not the Lily Allen version we’ve had enough of that at Christmas thank you very much. Taken out of context this song could be about parental child abduction, it’s probably not but just think about the lyrics from a minute.

 

8. I’m gonna walk (500 miles).

We think it’s important that our child embraces her Scottish heritage.

 

9. Fit but you know it.

Possibly The Streets finest work and it’s equally important that our child embraces her London heritage. This might be a strange choice but it has a strong moral core.

 

10. Enter Sandman.

A beautiful lullaby by Metallica and a throwback to when I had lovely long flowing hair.

 

Songs that didn’t make the list

 

A Boy Named Sue.

If we were going to have a boy I wanted him to understand why I gave him that awful name.

 

Nursery Rhymes

They are all of bit strange.

 

Anything too current

My music collection runs mostly from 1994 to till the mid-noughties with a few old hits thrown into the mix. I don’t know the words to any Rihanna songs either.

 

 

Michael Shilling is a baby and family portrait photographer at Memory Gate Photography he is due to become a father for the first time on 10th July 2014