Odd requirements of an Americana-loving infant

This weekend we went to our baby friend Connor’s first birthday party. Afterwards we ended up at the parent’s house to play some Cards Against Humanity, because we’re terrible people and don’t care who knows it.

As it was a little late, Maggie needed to be put down for a pre-nighttime nap and we ended up with the problem we’ve been facing for a long time – without the classic Americana vibe of Willie’s Roadhouse on Sirius XM, our little angel can not sleep.

We’ve tried some other things, CDs, an assortment of MP3s, baby music, folk, indie, pop, but if it’s not Sirius XM’s live broadcasts it’s not for her.

I installed the Sirius XM app on my half-dead phone, threw it into the room with my cranky baby, and within two minutes she was passing out to the dulcet harmonies of someone cheating on someone else, or having done someone wrong.

I don’t worry at the moment that anything she’s hearing is going to infect her brain with lyin’ cheatin two timing double dealing backstabbing ways, but I think we’re going to have to find some seriously toned down harmonies by the time she starts speaking.

I don’t really want to have to explain to her that the song “I met a friend of yours today,” is about a guy hearing another guy bragging about banging his wife in a strange bar, or that “he stopped loving her today,” is about a love that would not die until he finally did.

I’d rather the first questions on music were more about why Elmo can’t sing or Barney uses copyright free melodies when he’s got the big Barney Buck$. But oh well.

Me and ITMama have decided it’s in all of our best interests to have The XM app on our phones and have some shows downloaded for when the next time comes and we’re at a friend’s house and it’s bedtime for baby.

In the meantime, we’re searching for other music that fits in with Maggie’s evident requirements of:

• Can hear the individual instruments
• Singing in a normal voice / not happy / not baby / not excited
• Slowish cadence
• Good to rock a baby to
• Doesn’t scream
• Could be elevator music without much conversion

My hope is by one year she would enjoy geek pop, but at 10 months it doesn’t appear she likes it all that much. Tolerates yes, but loves no.

It still amazes me we managed to find out she’s an Americana loving baby, but it happened because I was driving around with her and playing a couple of minutes of each type of music I could find as she was cranky and Willie’s Roadhouse came on and bam, quiet happy baby.

100+ channels of music and that’s what she loves.

This is not an ad for Sirius XM as a note, although you can take it as one if you want to send me a buck or two :).

In the meantime, I’m still working on getting a John Denver MP3 playlist together that she likes – I know she likes about four of his songs and absolutely despises some of them, so having to pick and choose what works for when I don’t have an internet connection.

Never before being a parent did I imagine I was going to be a country music DJ.