DC2
- ABC song (especially Daddy’s)
- Shiny Happy People (REM)
- Stand (REM)
- These boots were made for walking (Nancy Sinatra)
- Love Shack (B52s)
- Anything by the mamas and the papas
DC1
- Bare Naked Ladies Snack Time (especially the Raisins song and the Ninjas song)
- Jonathan Coulton (especially Still Alive)
- TMBG (especially Why does the sun shine? and Why does the sun really shine?)
- Various traditional children’s songs such as, Down by the bay or Ain’t it great to be crazy? (DH assures me these are indeed traditional children’s songs)
What do your children like to listen to? What did you like to listen to as a child?
Grumpy Rumblings (of the formerly untenured) 
October 23, 2012 at 7:12 am
DC favorite song (self-report): The Day the Music Died. Also embraced: most of the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC — you get the idea. To my bemusement (sic) he has become an exuberant air guitarist; not sure where he picked that up.
As for me, I listened repeatedly to Tom Lehrer’s That Was the Year that Was and Pete Seeger’s Waist Deep in the Deep Muddy (principally side 1) as a kid. There were a few others, I know one included the Battle of New Orleans. Oh, and Flanders and Swann At the Drop of a Hat, I should really dig that one out; I think DC would get a kick out of the Hippopotamus Song, not to mention the Gnu.
October 23, 2012 at 7:31 am
My sister embraced Disco, which, as a child growing up with it in disfavor, I could never understand.
She was also talking about breakdancing being the hot new thing a few years back. I’m like, yeah, that was also cool when I was 6.
<3 Tom Lehrer. I used to stay up to listen to Dr. Demento. Good times. :)
October 23, 2012 at 7:32 am
My kids love everything. They’re addicted to Gangnam Style right now and Gotye’s Somebody that I used to know. They love pop music. But the boyfriend has been introducing them to metal and they’ve LOVED that too. And last night I was playing some old school Cuban big band mambos and the like and they were shaking their little hips. As long as it’s something they can dance to, or in the case of metal jump around and headbang, they’re in.
October 23, 2012 at 4:37 pm
DC2 actively disliked Gangnam style. I think ze is too young to appreciate its subtleties. (Um…)
October 23, 2012 at 6:56 pm
LOL!!!
October 23, 2012 at 7:16 pm
There are subtleties! It’s apparently about the Gangnam district in Seoul, and it’s kind of mocking the nouveau-riche that live there. At least, that’s what one of our friends (who used to live in Korea) explained to us.
October 23, 2012 at 7:19 pm
Our 3 month old just isn’t quite getting it. Maybe next month.
October 25, 2012 at 10:54 pm
Gangnam Style is on repeat at my house. For the last week, the kids have put on a nightly, post-dinner dance performance for us, complete with equestrian-ish dance stylings.
October 26, 2012 at 9:05 am
That is AWESOME. They’re going to put it on Just Dance 4 :D
October 23, 2012 at 7:39 am
My pre-schooler loves Falling
Slowly by Glen Hansard (if you google it you have probably heard it even though the artist is not familiar). Other than that, I take both kiddos to ‘Music Together’ and they both LOVE all the music from those classes- each session has a new series of songs and families get a CD. As a parent who always said I would never listen to kids music in the car, I’m a little embarrassed to admit it. But this music doesn’t bother me and the kids cannot get enough.
October 23, 2012 at 8:42 am
I’ll bet you anything that no kid could possibly resist Planet Claire.
October 23, 2012 at 1:54 pm
DC2 is a big B52s fan, but prefers their later stuff. Ze is fine with the stuff from the earlier albums (Rock Lobster, for example), but gets excited about, say, Love Shack.
October 23, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Love Shack is one of their worst songs, and I could never understand why it was popular. PhysioWife and I fought about whether the band was allowed to play Rock Lobster at our wedding, because she has a philosophical objection to any kind of “organized” synchronous dancing. GUESS WHO WON!!!!!!!!!!!!
October 23, 2012 at 9:52 am
As a kid we (dad and I) listened to Linda Ronstadt, Bob Seger, Lyle Lovett and Eric Clapton came along at some point. Oh! And Stevie Nicks! I wanted to be her. (Her solo stuff.) I was 5 years old when dad took me to a Bob Seger concert. (I also picked one of his songs as the father-daughter dance for my wedding which everyone thought was weird but dad totally got it–it was the song he always used to sing to me.) My family can’t figure out how I ended up so musical but I credit it to all the music dad listened to with me in those early years.
October 23, 2012 at 10:16 am
I was a total musicals nerd when I was little… Gilbert and Sullivan, Annie Get Your Gun, Annie, and so on. My father had worked for an usher during a bunch of big musicals and revivals, and that was the music around the house.
October 23, 2012 at 9:56 am
He requests and sings along to Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Dolly Parton’s When You Think About Love.
October 23, 2012 at 4:37 pm
We appear to have a new Dolly Parton fan in the household. Who knew?
October 23, 2012 at 10:29 am
When I was very young, I don’t remember listening to music as an activity. Sing alongs of traditional kid fare and chorus, I suppose. I do remember watching the elephant show and Fred Penner’s Place, which were musically oriented.
Later, my parents would play Sally Rogers to get me out of bed, and of course the PBS Peter Paul and Mary specials (I think I got to stay up late for some of those). Lots of singing at camp, of course. At girl scouts, LOTS of silly stuff, with a few serious campfire songs. At hippie camp later, occasional silly songs (cat came back) and the Hippie Classics (Union Maid, Joe Hill, Blowing in the Wind, Universal Soldier, Ripple, ect.).
When I got old enough, I’d listen to Chicago’s Midnight Special (“folkmusic and farce, showtunes and satire, madness and escape”- like Dr. Demento, but with lots of hippies. Where I first heard “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park”). As I got older, once I had my own CD player, I yoinked some of my parents CDs (Beatles, Bob Seger’s Greatest Hits, Paul Simon’s Graceland), but that was pretty much out of kid and into teen territory.
My Roo loves TMBG and most traditional kid fare, but not much else yet. He gets mad at me when I sing to the radio :-(
October 23, 2012 at 2:27 pm
Tom Hall’s “Sneaky Snake.”
October 23, 2012 at 2:30 pm
And covered by Dolly Parton http://youtu.be/w-NqCiGvBsM
October 23, 2012 at 4:09 pm
That was a big hit with DC2!
October 23, 2012 at 4:05 pm
Ooh, lots of new stuff we’ll have to try during DC2’s 8-10pm nightly dance party. (Routine…not the same as schedule)
October 23, 2012 at 7:19 pm
I listened to a lot of folk, cowboy songs, and Raffi as a kid. We didn’t have the new-type of kids’ cloying music, but we did have a lot of silly songs and more classic songs (like what you listed above). One of my favorites went something like “I like to eat, I like to eat, apples and bananas,” and then they’d change vowels so it would go “I looke to oot, I looke to oot, ooples and bononos” (and so on for other vowels). We also listened to a lot of oldies. And some classical for good measure, mostly influenced by an elementary teacher all three of us had who required reports on composers, artists, and endangered species.
Oh, and as an 8 year old, my mom bought me a “best of the 80s” cassette that I still love. It featured such hits as Walk Like an Egyptian and Kokomo.
True story: I thought that all the music that could be written had already been written until I was in 6th grade. Still embarrassed by that.
October 23, 2012 at 7:20 pm
DC1 and I like to sing the apples and bananas song together. :)
October 25, 2012 at 6:44 pm
right now…
rihanna – sos, s&m, russian roulette
muse – knights of cydonia
mgmt – kids, time to pretend
kesha – die young
the lumineers – ho hey