I am getting into a car to go pick up my teenage daughter and a couple of her friends from a trip to the mall. Because I’ve been volunteered to deliver those kids to their homes, and because one of them lives as far as is geographically possible from us while still technically residing in the same township, I am looking at 45-50 minutes of total driving. I want to have some music playing while I’m driving, and not of the kind that kids these days prefer.
My little problem: I don’t want to embarrass my kid. I want to be a cool Dad. And yet, 90% of music on my iPod is in languages other than English and hardly any is in genres that teenagers would appreciate. The rest falls into the “oldies” category, with a good chance of appearing too dated to the kids.
My only safe choice seems to be in going with my 50-song Beatles playlist. The Beatles are kinda undissable; even if the other kids don’t like it, I can’t imagine them giving my daughter hard time about her old man being a Beatles’ fan.
At some point after the kids get in the car, Hello Goodbye comes up in the shuffle. Suddenly, they all start singing along from the backseat1. Becky notices my apparent surprise of that and remarks: “See, Daddy, my friends are cool!”
If they are cool singing to it, I must be cool playing it.
Whew! Aced it!
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1 It came up in a conversation afterwards that the teens know the song mostly because of Jonas Brothers’ cover, but they all agreed that they hated that and that the original version was much much better…
Once again proof, that Beatles withstand time. I wonder how teens would react to my Sinatra – BB King collections. Oh well, only 10 more years to find out.
The Beatles were kids themselves, and kids seem to identify with that. Sinatra was a heartthrob at the beginning, but he lost his “kid-cred” when he kept on singing into his 70’s. Tony Bennett was smart enough to get it back – go figure…
Just be careful not to be too cool. When I was a kid, one of my mother’s favorite songs (which she’d turn up whenever it came on the radio), was Dylan’s “Lay Lady, Lay”. I was mortified when there were other kids in the car and said things like, “Mo-oo-om! Do you know what that song’s about?