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.

Late last year, we wrote a three part series on our attempts to de-tether music synchronization between computer and phone.

The experiments were unsuccessful – all we found is that 3G data speeds are insufficient for the constant playlist churn that we like to experience on our phone. But it wasn’t entirely a loss.

In the process, iTunes – arguably the worst software for a Windows machine on the planet – was ditched from my computer in favour of the incredible (and highly recommended) Media Monkey. And last.fm entered our life.

But you’ve been on last.fm since 2009.

This is true. In 2009, I wondered what this whole “internet radio” malarky was about. I got myself a last.fm account, and wondered how many plays it would take (with me loving or banning as many tracks as possible) to go from a blank slate to an accurate representation of my musical tastes.

I did no scrobbling. I answered no – or, at least, minimal – questions about my musical likes and dislikes.

That experiment, by the way, was another failure. I did not possess the patience.

But my Android Music Adventure experiments got me scrobbling. And I loved it — I cannot resist a good set of data about myself, with which to analyze what I actually like and dislike, rather than what I think I like and dislike.

I’m wise enough to know that I probably don’t actually understand what I enjoy.

Having stats on every song I’ve listened to (pretty much) over the last half year, we would now like to report on the following surprises:

#50: Segovia

There’s a four-way tie for the 50th most played artist since my last.fm revolution. And alongside Creedence Clearwater Revival and Bjork, is Andres Segovia.

I’ve always been a sucker for great guitarists, and Segovia is certainly that. But it is, nevertheless, surprising to see classical guitar land itself in the top 50.

#31: Frank Zappa

While Segovia gets credit for landing so high, Zappa is occupying a surprisingly low spot.

Your blogger listens to a lot of Zappa, or so he thought. And Zappa’s seemingly endless catalogue of music is the sort of thing that prompts increased listening, as there is more to listen to without listening to the same things over and over again.

And yet, he’s down in 31.

First thoughts were that “Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention” would push him up … but not really. Barely at all. And he’s hardly the only artist to appear as two (or more) in the chart.

#17: Lily Allen

I know I like Lily Allen. I know it’s a bit weird – she doesn’t seem, on the surface, to fit with other music I enjoy. But enjoy her music I do.

It’s just a little bit of a surprise to see how much. Lily Allen sits between Radiohead and David Bowie on my “top artists” chart.

#7: Raffi

Not the only sign of fatherhood in the list, but the one closest the top.

Raffi music was bought (amongst other things) so that we had some music we could play for Maggie (this was before we learned that she loved Kanye West). And I have played this music so often that it manages to rank in my top ten.

All the music I play for myself – to and from (and at) work. While sitting and typing blog posts. On airplanes. Except for a small group of six artists, I’ve heard more Raffi in the last six months.

That, for the record, is an awful lot of Raffi. The more we get together …

#1: Pink Floyd

Fitting and ridiculous, Pink Floyd sits at #1 on the list of most listened to music.

If this were high school, I would be saying: No shit, sherlock.
If this were university, I would be saying: Not much of a surprise there.

I was way into Pink Floyd. Given that I was three years old when The Wall was released, I spent a large portion of my youth far more into Pink Floyd than I had any right to be.

I owned every album. I owned every video. I bought books, t-shirts, bootleg albums, anything I could get my hands on. I knew – still know, pretty much – every lyric and every note of music of every song.

My wife doesn’t like Pink Floyd. It’s easy to see why people don’t like it. Above, I’ve linked to an album written and recorded by a white, male, mutli-millionaire who has the good fortune to be able to write and play music for a living. When he feels like it. Because he’s so rich he only needs to work when he feels like it.

And that album? Ninety minutes of self-indulgent whining about how hard it is to play music for millions of dollars, and how he misses his daddy. It’s easy to see why the teenagers who listen to Kanye West are more likely to get laid.

I like it all the same. But now that I’m a wise old man, it seems like I don’t really listen to it that much anymore.

Seems like that means listening to it more than anything else, all the same.