“Baby Shark” is torture.

Don’t take it from me — a dad who, on a recent Sunday, listened patiently as his 2-year-old son twirled about, warbling “Do-Do-Do-Do-Do” maniacally at 6:15 a.m. Take it from city officials in West Palm Beach, Fla., who literally used the song as torture, blasting it (and “Raining Tacos”) on repeat to deter homeless people from sleeping on a city-owned patio this summer.

For kids, of course, the tune is anything but torture, racking up nearly 4 billion YouTube views and counting. But the song’s ubiquity, and inanity, raises an important question: Why do children love such terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad music?

I’ve started to think of such songs as junk food, even candy — sugary-sweet, decidedly one-note, light on nutrients. And just like I wouldn’t let my kids subsist on Dum Dums and SweeTarts, however tempting that might be, I’ve tried to sneak a little good music into their cultural diet, much like a parent might slip peas and broccoli into a plate of mac-and-cheese. It hasn’t always worked — as the old adage goes, the parent provides, and the child decides — but it has helped rein in the “Baby Shark” reign of terror.

[Children’s TV can also be torture. Here are some shows you won’t hate.]

Of course, by good music, I mean music I like. So I keep the car radio tuned to a classical station. I play female songwriters like Kacey Musgraves or Margo Price at home. And I recently took my kids to a performance of Beatles tunes put on by Rock and Roll Playhouse, a nationwide organization that enlists real-deal musicians to play real-deal rock venues while covering both kid- and parent-friendly songs by famous artists. The Beatles show was a hit with my 5-year-old daughter, who smiled and shimmied next to the stage. My son, however, was overwhelmed and hovered with my wife near the bar outside the performance space. When it comes to songs about ocean creatures, he still prefers “Baby Shark” to “Octopus’s Garden.”

The writer’s daughter, via Paul Underwood

It turns out, I needed to be more creative. Mere exposure wouldn’t suffice. In my quest to figure out how to improve my kids’ appreciation of good music, I consulted a few working musicians with children, some of whom even perform music explicitly for kids. Here’s what I learned.

I learned that music and gadgetry are constantly intertwined, and that providing opportunities for interactivity can pique your child’s interest. Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Sharon Van Etten, whose 2-½-year-old son is almost exactly the same age as mine, told me about the power of outmoded musical technology. “I found these early hip-hop cassettes, so he could learn how to use a cassette player,” she said. “He’s not ready to quite handle the LPs yet, but he’s really into what he calls ‘Boogie Down,’ this Kurtis Blow song called ‘Do the Do.’ He loves it so much.”

I learned that they might enjoy kid-friendly classics as much as their early-millennial dad. Corin Tucker, of punk-rock stalwarts Sleater-Kinney, mentioned a beloved TV theme song. “I would go back to my own childhood, and find things like ‘Scooby-Doo’ that I loved, and play that for the kids, to make sure they have a bit of that in their brains somewhere,” she told me. She also introduced them to favorites like Patti Smith, Kate Bush and Talking Heads. At least one of them stuck; she took her now 18-year-old son to a David Byrne show last year.

Another piece of advice from the experts: Don’t underestimate your kids’ tastes. (Again, the food analogy holds up — both of my children love smoked salmon, which I didn’t even try until I was in my 20s.)

Scott Klopfenstein, a musician who performs regular children’s gigs at Mekelburg’s bar in Brooklyn, told me his daughters have enjoyed everything from Miles Davis’s electric period to the original Broadway cast recording of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.”

The writer’s son via, Paul Underwood

He also encourages making music together, putting on weekly jams at bath time. “I play a chord progression” on the guitar, he said. “And everybody gets a turn to make up a melody and lyric. It is astonishing what they come up with. And I get to know what they’re into, and where they’re at developmentally and emotionally.”

This was all great advice. My family keeps a ukulele and some drums around the house in case inspiration strikes. (Sadly, I don’t play.) But I also needed an understanding of why kids like the music they do, terrible or otherwise.

I talked with child psychiatrist Dr. Eugene V. Beresin, M.D., executive director of the Clay Center for Healthy Minds at Massachusetts General Hospital — who also happens to be a guitar player with a deep love of folk music. He helped me identify a few key pillars of songs kids like.

Kid-friendly tunes tend to be upbeat and catchy. There’s usually some degree of adaptability, where a kid can, say, suggest a new animal sound during “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” Repetition is key, which will come as no surprise to any parent who has sung endless versions of “The Itsy Bitsy Spider,” or contributed to the billions of “Baby Shark” views on YouTube. Finally, the songs tend to be about relatable, familiar topics.

“Children’s music gravitates around children’s themes, and concepts they can grasp — like the wheels on the bus go ’round and ’round,” Dr. Beresin said. “My granddaughter is 2 years and 4 months. She likes ‘Baby Shark’ because she’s a baby.” Dr. Beresin sang a bit of the song — going through Mama Shark, Daddy Shark and so on — to highlight another notion central to kids’ lives: “It has a theme of a family.”

It started to make sense. I spoke with musicologist Dr. Louis Epstein, assistant professor of music at St. Olaf College, who performs original children’s songs with another professor as part of Louis and Dan and the Invisible Band. (He’s Louis.) It turns out I was missing a critical pillar, Dr. Epstein told me: “transgression.” Kids’ songs often have a little bit of silliness, naughtiness, obnoxiousness or some mix of the three. “It’s something that kids are really interested in,” he said, mentioning songs with bathroom humor in the lyrics, or songs that are obviously irritating to their parents.

Those five pillars — catchiness, adaptability, repetition, relatability and transgression — underlie not just popular songs for kids, but songs popular with listeners of all ages. To some extent, they define the most popular tunes by the Beatles or Sleater-Kinney, not to mention songs like “Do the Do,” “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” or, yes, “Baby Shark.”

I looked back at a Spotify playlist I made of my daughter’s favorite songs. It starts with some tunes she regularly requested — “Roar” by Katy Perry, “Thunder” by Imagine Dragons, a healthy selection from the “Frozen” and original “Mary Poppins” soundtracks — and slowly morphs into grown-up-approved songs she knows (e.g., The Mamas and the Papas’ take on “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” which my wife often sings to her at bedtime).

Roughly midway through is a song by one of my favorite bands that somehow has caught on with my daughter: “White Sky” by Vampire Weekend. Singer Ezra Koenig coos a wordless falsetto chorus: “Ah! Ah! Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-oo-o!” It sounds, as a friend once told me, like he’s being tickled. It’s pure joy on tape, and one day I overheard my daughter singing it to herself after I’d played it in the car. We listened to it over and over again, earning it a proud place on our RosieRoars playlist. I was tickled. Catchy. Adaptable (we could change the chorus from “ooh” to “eeh” and so on). Repetitive. Relatable. (Who hasn’t been tickled?) Transgressive. (Who sings like that?)

I’ve started putting together a new playlist with songs mentioned by the artists and academics I spoke with. I haven’t road-tested it yet, but plan to this weekend. We’ll see what sticks.

Check out a Spotify playlist of the music Paul plans to explore with his kids.

Paul L. Underwood writes frequently on health and culture for national publications. He’s the father to two young children in Austin, Texas.

main photo: CreditAart-Jan Venema

Via  https://parenting.nytimes.com/