Part three of our thirty song challenge does not get any easier. Oh, no.

3: A song that makes you happy

What do these even mean?

A song that reinforces a good mood?
A song that lifts me out of a bad mood?
A song that puts a smile on my face when I’m heading home from work after a tough day?

The reason I’m even bothering with this thirty-part meme is because music makes me happy. So it’s happy to write a series of blog posts about music, even as the questions are all frustrating.

So, maybe … all of them? Sad songs make me happy. Loud songs make me happy. Quiet songs make me happy. Slow songs make me happy. Upbeat songs make me happy. Songs make me happy.

But I have to choose one, don’t I? The meme demands it.

So here’s something that’s better than most at putting a smile on my face.

(Image from The land of wiki.)

Around this time last year — I think it was last year — I decided to do something called the “30 Day Song Challenge” on Facebook. Basically it’s a thirty-part quiz about the taker’s musical taste. And it’s a little bit juvenile. And I’ve decided to do it again — only on the blog this year.

Day One: Your favourite song.

The word “favourite” is going to feature quite a lot over this series. And I never know how to apply it. For instance, Sick Again by Led Zeppelin is playing as I type this. And I’m fully engaged in the song. I’m not thinking of other music, or wishing it was another song. But realistically, there’s no way I would — at any point in my life — name it as “my favourite song”. But in the moment I’m listening to it, I don’t want to listen to anything else.

So is it my favourite song?

Well, no. It’s over now. I’ve moved on.

Enjoyment of music is, of course, part emotional and part intellectual. I can look down my nose at a song because of simple lyrics, a lack of complexity or difficulty required to perform it, or both — this is an intellectual judgement of the song in question. But most of my — and most people’s, I would think — reaction to music, or any art, is based in emotion. Art is meant to make us feel. And so my favourite song of any fleeting moment rests upon how that particular piece interacts with my current emotional state.

So my favourite song varies greatly depending on my mood, and the reasons for that mood. It can depend on the day of the week (The Cure’s Friday I’m in Love isn’t nearly as fun on Monday morning). It can depend on the weather.

So how do I, in my current neutral, introspective, intellectual state choose a favourite?

Statistics, that’s how. I figure that I tend to listen to songs I like more often than those I don’t. And that I tend to skip songs I dislike more often than those I do.

And given that it’s been a year since I last answered these questions, I’ll refine my statistical set to the past year — otherwise my all-time most played songs would overwhelm any recent changes. And what have I listened to the most in the past year?

This, apparently:

Earlier today, Maggie wanted music do dance around the living room to. So I put on a playlist I keep called “Maggie”. This playlist contains all the children’s music on my computer — Raffi, Rockabye Baby, and so on — together with a random assortment of songs that Maggie has previously shown herself to enjoy.

At some point during our marathon dance session, there was this:

Mixed into the playlist of kids music for Maggie, there is Lady Gaga. I wonder how Maggie will perceive Gaga’s music once she’s grown.

— Mr Topp (@mrtopp) March 3, 2013

This got me thinking: what is kid’s music?

I’m not sure I have an answer. For me, kid’s music is divided into three categories:

• Music produced with the intention that kid’s listen to it.
• Nursery rhymes & lullabies.
• Music I associate with childhood.

I’m not a fan of the first category; it seems to be made up of songs which nobody would buy for themselves, but are expected to buy for their children. And outside of two songs (Twinkle, twinkle little star and Teddy Bears’ Picnic), Maggie seems to prefer music made “for adults” to that made with children in mind.

The second category is hard to separate from the first, but I do so for three reasons:

1. The songs tend to be traditional.
2. The songs tend to be short.
3. They tend to be sung by parents, rather than played recordings.

There is something nice about these short rhymes that everybody knows, sung by a parent. They connect childhood to childhood.

It’s the third category that I find most interesting. Because the songs I associate with childhood go beyond the Raffi and the nursery rhymes. It’s filled with pop songs from the late 50s and early 60s, and it wasn’t until I was well into adulthood that I realised that my childhood had not been spent listening to children’s music, but rather the songs that my mother liked from when she was a pre-teen and a teenager.

And as a kid, it was these songs that I would listen to repeatedly. I thought they were for kids — for instance the sountrack to Stand By Me was surely in our house because Stand By Me was a movie with kids in it, so they were kid’s songs. Right?

Wrong.

In fact, the album is full of big hits from when my Mom was 12 years old, written for adults. Or at least teens and tweens (which is really the target audience for most popular music). It’s like a movie coming out now (or in 2016) where the soundtrack is basically The Greatest Hits of 1989 (or at least A Bunch of Awesome Songs: 1987-1992). I would totally buy that. My Mom totally bought that. And those songs are the soundtrack of my childhood now; kid’s music.

All of which makes me wonder why we waste money on kid’s music — music that we don’t particularly want to listen to. Maggie likes it, to be sure, but she likes the things we like better.

And I’m pretty sure that one day she’ll hear Lady Gaga and Beyonce singing Telephone, and think it’s a fun song for kids.

Earlier this week, Maggie and I were walking to the childminder’s in the morning, as we are wont to do.

Maggie started singing.

She has always liked music, and will occasionally try to sing along with a song that’s playing, but this marked the first time she simply broke into song without provocation. I have no idea what she was singing — there was some attempt at melody, some “dadadas” and “lalalas”, and a bunch of unrecognizable words peppered with the occasional “Maggie” or “up”.

And then, in the middle of the song, Maggie sings:

Shake, shake.
Shake, shake.
Boo-tay.

Shake it, girl.