If you’re happy and you know it, clench your fists

Resisting the scourge of children’s songs

Photo by Eric Prouzet on Unsplash

Last week I went to my first stay-and-play session with my six-month-old son. It was at a children’s centre around the corner from our flat, allowing me to roll him around a slightly larger toy-strewn mat than the one we have at home. I spent most of the session trying simultaneously to fill in a registration form, play with my baby, and prevent a 10-month-old from bludgeoning him with a maraca. It felt like a lot to be doing without any shoes on.

The sessions always end with a singalong, which was the main reason I’d left the house — I get so few chances for communal singing in my secular life that I take them where I can. As the only dad there I expected to be vital in filling out the lower ranges, and went swaggering into the other room with the confidence of a man who believes he’s needed. Having to sit cross-legged on the floor quickly nipped that confidence in the bud, though, which was probably for the best.

Once assembled in joint-punishing formation, our motley choir crooned through the classics. We rowed our boats. Our stars twinkled. We wound up our bobbins. We were happy, and we knew it. It was all very wholesome and my son seemed to enjoy staring at toddlers who weren’t trying to hit him while I practised my baritone. But by the time I left, I was dying to hear a minor chord. I’d have taken a chromatic note, or even just some gentle syncopation. Some form of lyrical subtext would have been welcome too. And what even is a bobbin?

I understand the need for primary colours music like this. Most people know the words already and they’re easy to pick up for anyone who doesn’t. But sitting through more than a couple of these sickly sweet songs is tortuous, like being waterboarded with maple syrup. The smug insistence of If You’re Happy and You Know It makes me want to leave my hands unclapped, my feet unstomped. It’s so depressing — can’t we put something more uplifting on, like Nick Drake or Radiohead?

Luckily, there are some alternatives, like Bach to Baby, which puts on live classical music concerts for children all over London. If, like me, you have a broad but shallow interest in classical music that mostly involves things you’ve heard on adverts, these shows are perfect. They’re each only 45 minutes long and you always know when you’re meant to clap. For something more modern, the Southbank Centre has free live music performances for children in its WordPlay sessions. I went last Friday and it wouldn’t have felt out of place on the last day of Glastonbury. Relaxing music, ambient lighting, and everyone in the audience was either frazzled with lack of sleep or stumbling around like a drunk. Quite a middle-class crowd too.

At home, my partner sings Hungarian songs to our son, which gives some variety to the English ones that I’m now hearing everywhere else. Because I have failed to keep up my Duolingo streak, I have no idea how inane they are either. I asked for a summary of one the other day and apparently it was about someone trying to sell a vole at the market. Maybe the less I know the better. Some of the melodies are pleasant but I’ve been banned from using my fake Hungarian because it’s “hindering his linguistic development” and “really annoying”, so I can’t sing along.

By far the best way to resist the musical pap of nursery rhymes is to repurpose songs you like already. Bob Dylan’s Mr. Tambourine Man has emerged as my lullaby of choice because the dreamlike imagery is perfect for putting a baby to bed. I used to be able to get him to sleep by the second verse but now the line, “I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going”, has become particularly apt and I have to sing the whole thing, but what a joy that is. It certainly beats Rock-a-Bye Baby.

If my son is screaming for attention, I can join in with Lulu’s elongated “We-e-e-e-e-e-e-ell” followed by, “You know you make me wanna shout”. It seems to entertain him and I find it quite cathartic. And to help him practise sitting, I can do no better than Oops Upside Your Head and the accompanying dance, popular at British discos and weddings, where everyone sits straddling each other on the floor and sways back and forth. I’ve started lobbying for it to be recommended by the NHS.

I’m also now convinced that Paul Simon wrote Bridge Over Troubled Water specifically to soothe a crying child, with its calming gospel rhythm and the opening lines, “When you’re weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all”. And what a lovely aim for a parent, to be a bridge over troubled water for your child. Not “there will be no troubled water”, or “if your waters are untroubled clap your hands” — just that if there is troubled water you will help them overcome it.

Yet even with this growing repertoire of old songs with new meanings, written by some of the world’s greatest songwriters, there is still only one song that has burrowed deep into my head and refused to leave. It appears uninvited throughout the day — in the shower, walking the dog, queueing at the shop — the words spooling around my brain, wrapping themselves around my thoughts until all I can think or hear are the lyrics. Before I know it I’m singing it again: “Wind the bobbin up, wind the bobbin up. Pull, pull, clap, clap, clap. Wind it back again, wind it back again. Pull, pull, clap, clap, clap.”