My daughter's music

My five year old daughter has her own playlist on iTunes. It is reasonably good:

• The Automatic - Monster
• Coldplay - Yellow
• Kanye West - Touch the Sky
• Madonna - Sorry
• The Blood Arm - Suspicious character
• Cliff Richard - Batchelor Boy
• The Feeling - Never be lonely
• Scissor Sisters - I don't feel like dancing
• JET - Are you gonna be my girl
• Just Jack - Starz in their eyes
• Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby
• Kooks - Naive
• The View - Same jeans

Is there a way of pulling in an iTunes playlist by the way? I don't want Tony Hirst to accuse me of being clunky again :)

You will notice the one fly in the ointment in the playlist - Cliff. She does love Cliff, and I had to endure 'Devil Woman' on repeat the other day. She will be very embarrassed about this one day.

I was thinking that when I was five I had a record of Pinky and Perky singing Somewhere over the rainbow and that was about it. I think her playlist demonstrates a few things. The first is the ubiquity of music - we will be in Tesco and she will hear the Kaiser Chiefs and say 'I love this!' The second is that music was probably more significant to my generation than it was to my parents, and so she has picked up on the stuff we listen to. The third thing is that the trend towards the song as granularity rather than the artist is already evident. (Bloody) Cliff aside she doesn't really like a particular artist, just songs and because we can access these immediately she builds up her playlist as she hears things, rather than having to go to a shop to get it (that already seems an age ago - 'I'm going in to town tomorrow to buy the new Clash album'). Lastly, there isn't much permanence to this - it will evolve and change. I should save, or burn it on to a CD - your first playlist now replaces your first bike as an artifact of nostalgia.

Comments

[Drizzle'smum]

Thanks fora good blog! I have just started working at a continuing education school in Canada and your Open University institution is a wonderful way for me to learn a bit more about online education. However, the reason I happened upon your blog was because of Cliff Richard -- I had to jump in and defend both Cliff and your child'd musical taste. As a fellow parent of a 5 year old AND someone who loves Cliff's voice(knowingly with a devotion beyond all rational explanation) I would consider it a total blessing if my son would insist on listening to Cliff. Misery is not being able to turn off the Kidstuff station on Sirius radio. Have you heard SpongeBob sing? If so, you'd appreciate Cliff in the morning. If they're like this at five, I have no idea what we're going to do at 15!

On a more serious note, your point about the ubiquity of i-tunes and the role of playlists in the future of nostalgia is a very interesting one. I'm going to be thinking of it as I consider how to preserve my son's childhood for posterity.
Best regards from Canada.

[AJ Cann]

Yeah, my kids had good playlists until a year or so ago, then they discovered rap. The horror, the horror. But there may be some good news on the music front, we7:
http://scienceoftheinvisible.blogspot.com/2007/05/online-music-technologies-evolve.html

[Tony Hirst]

Singles are not necessarily the only way forward: here's a new take on the EP: http://www.currybet.net/cbet_blog/2007/04/the_rhino_hifives_reinvent_the.php

Clunkety, clunkety, clunkety, clunk...
This any good? http://lifehacker.com/software/apple/share-itunes-playlists-with-the-world-213719.php

[Ben Lee]

I must say I love your daughter's selections... My personal favorite Cliff Richard song would have to be 'Living Doll,' though.

[Martin]

I must admit I found myself humming 'Carrie' the other day...