Many of the songs we sing to our children are hundreds of years old, with their original meanings obscured by history. In this episode, producer Leila Battison takes Dallas on a dark, surprising journey through history’s most famous nursery rhymes and lullabies, and up through the “Baby Sharks” and “Happy Songs” of today. Along the way, they share the songs they’ve made up for their own children, and explore why this music is just as important to parents as it is to kids.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Helmut Schenker - The Secret Spring
Ever So Blue - Mein
Johannes Bornlöf - Turtle Swim
Ruiqi Zhao - Third Person
Jon Björk - A Bard’s Minuet
Jerry Lacey - In My Arms
Bonnie Grace - Peace in the Realm
Lennon Hutton - Granny
Playtime - Don’t Wak'em Up
Ludvig Moulin - Caution Wet Floor
John Abbot - British Grenadiers
Rikard From - The Beginning of a Fairy Tale
Magnus Ludvigsson - Valse Provençal
Cercles Nouveles - Old Britannia
Arden Forest - Notice
Megan Wofford - A Sky Unveiled
Howard Harper-Barnes: Hush Little Baby [piano version]
Franz Gordon - Morning Blues
Franz Gordon - Take Away the Blues
Martin Landstrom - A House Remembered
Amber Glow - Starlit Fantasia
Victor Lundberg - Twinkle Twinkle Little Star [piano version]
Franz Gordon - Lullaby for Charlie

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Five Twenty Thousand Hertz episodes that kids would love:

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Tyrannosaurus FX (Apple/Spotify)
Songbugs (Apple/Spotify)

View Transcript ▶︎

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.

[music in - Helmut Schenker - The Secret Spring]

Recently, our producer Leila Battison set up a recording session with me.

Leila: Hi Dallas.

Hi Leila.

Leila: How are you?

I'm doing great.

Leila: Uh, we're gonna make a podcast about nursery rhymes.

That sounds lovely.

Leila: So, the reason I wanted to make this is ‘cause I've just had a tiny baby. And I have found my world completely taken over by nursery rhymes, songs, child appropriate music… And I thought it'd be good to chat to you about it, because you are more than just the smooth voice of 20k.

I am more than the smooth voice of 20k. I also have three little ones, and I have also been taken over by many nursery rhymes for over a decade.

Leila: Just tell me a little bit about how your world changed when your first child arrived.

Oh my goodness Leila. That's a big question!

Leila: I know. I like to start with the big ones.

[music in: Ever So Blue - Mein]

Well, first of all, even asking that question, I had a full body wave of like tingles, just from that being the most profound moment of my life. It’s hard to put into words.

And I remember when I saw my daughter's face for the first time, going, “I don't recognize this face, but I love this face more than anything in the world.”

And the new dimension of my wife turning from my partner, my best friend, to now she's that plus a mother. And seeing her change in that way is just absolutely beautiful and profound.

Leila: Well I’m, I'm glad to hear you say that because as a mother, I don't feel very beautiful or profound. I feel like I'm barely holding it together.

And you are not alone in that feeling.

Leila: Any parent will tell you that having a child turns your world upside down. What are you meant to do with this tiny, vulnerable, bundle of tears?

Early on, the crying is so delicate. [delicate newborn crying] Of course, it gets louder for sure. But I remember there's some sort of link between my brain and this crying that feels primal and deep and I remember instinctively wanting to soothe.

[soothing whispers, baby quiets down]

Leila: So how DO you soothe a crying baby? For many people throughout human history, the answer has been simple: You sing to it.

[music in: Johannes Bornlöf - Turtle Swim]

Certainly when a child is crying, singing, and that stimulus of a calm, reassuring tonality, even if they don't understand the specifics of it, I feel is something that's deeply human. Whether it's day one, or the 80th year, it's just something that resonates with our brain.

For me, up until that point, I would say that I was really self conscious about my singing.

Leila: Mmhmm.

My wife has an absolutely stunning voice and she was an opera major. But I do remember when we had our first, that self consciousness went away because I was like, “I don't care about my self consciousness. I care about her and what she needs.”

And so singing and speaking and soothing felt very instinctual very quickly. Something about my daughter laying on my chest and feeling the movement of my body, and the vibrations… It just felt like I was supposed to.

Leila: And did she respond to you from an early stage?

I think so. Early on, I could tell that it was something that really synced the two of us together.

Leila: Singing might come naturally, but what I really want to explore is what we sing, and why. Because when you're an exhausted parent trying to sing, your brain can go in some strange directions.

In my delirium, one day, rocking my first daughter to sleep, I made up a ridiculous song that just came to the top of my head. I was kind of embarrassed for my wife to hear it, because I just made it up. And then she was like, “That will never catch on. It's too hard, it's too up and down.” And so I'm very proud of the fact that I was able to make up a song that they still can sing to this day, all of them.

Leila: Amazing.

And I suspect I'm gonna have to do that now.

Leila: Oh yes you are.

Okay, it basically goes… I'm so self conscious, I'll just do it. Forgive me.

[harp music underneath]

“Oh, the moon in the sky, it's so high up in the night. Oh help name redacted go to sleep. Oh, the moon in the sky, it's so high up in the night. Oh help name redacted go to sleep.”

Leila: Aww, that’s beautiful. Aww.

As you can see, I name redact. I want them to be their own people.

Leila: Oh, that's not the name of your child?

And nope, it’s not. Name Redacted Taylor.

Leila: Name Redacted Taylor!

Leila: I feel like in our household, I'm the kind of force of chaos when it comes to making up songs. I'll come up with a new one every day, and then my husband's the sounding board. And if he can sing it again, it's on the album.

Leila: One of my favorite ones, which I was so proud of that I actually wrote down the lyrics to the verses. Yes, there are verses, was, uh..

[piano & bass music underneath]

Leila: “He's just a tiny little baby. He's just a tiny little guy. He's just a tiny little baby. He doesn't know the ground from the sky.”

[piano music out]

I love it! I wish that you could see my beaming face.

Leila: I love making up songs for him, because he's like the least judgmental audience in the world, isn’t it?

Absolutely.

Leila: So when you started singing to your first child, were there specific lullabies you knew you wanted to sing?

I don't remember there being any real strategy behind it, other than the first thing that came to my exhausted brain. Like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,” or something very simple that I'm like, “Uh, okay, this is a nursery rhyme,” and I'm landing into nursery rhymes that already have a tried and true, proven, soothing formula. This is another one, there's probably lyrics to this, but I never sang the lyrics.

[humming]

[Brahms’ Lullaby fades in]

Leila: As it turns out, it's “Brahms' Lullaby,” which the composer wrote for a friend in 1868 when her son was born. It's probably the most famous lullaby ever written, thanks in part to the smooth vocals provided by Frank Sinatra in 1944.

[Frank Sinatra - Brahms Lullaby up, then under]

Leila: I definitely remember that racking your brains, like I came to motherhood completely unequipped with any nursery rhymes. And I remember like, he was a week old and crying and I'm like, “What can I sing to you?” And the only thing that came to mind was a dirgey sea shanty, about the death of fishing in the area. But it worked, you know? So he got sea shanties for the first month of his life.

Do we get a little rendition of the sea shanty?

[accordion + guitar music in]

Leila: “There's gold in the channel where the sun lights the sea, but the boats are all pulled up and stranded like me. I once was a fisherman, now come ashore, ‘cause they won't let us go to sea anymore.”

That's beautiful.

Leila: But it's miserable, ‘cause like, “They won't let us go to sea. Our livelihood is going. The quotas… Oh, it's terrible.”

Yeah, usually it's best not to think too deeply about the underlying meaning or history sometimes.

Leila: Oh, but Dallas that's exactly what we’re gonna do. [laughs]

[music in: Ruiqi Zhao - Third Person]

Leila: Traditional nursery rhymes are deeply entrenched in our culture, and some of them date back hundreds of years. But have you ever stopped to think what it is you're really singing to your kids?

Leila: After doing some digging, I think it's probably for the best that we've forgotten what these traditional nursery rhymes are about because... let’s just say that some of them get pretty disturbing.

[Harp Sting]

British Narrator: Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.

Leila: Do you remember how “Baa Baa Black Sheep” goes?

Oh, I know, yeah, it's, it's... “Baa, black sheep, have you any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full. One for the something something for the something.”

Leila: “One for the master and one for the dame, one for the little boy who lives down the lane.” Yeah.

Leila: So, I joked earlier about me singing dirgey sea shanties about quotas and stuff to my baby. And this is, it's just a bit like that because it's about tax.

Teach that baby about taxes immediately.

Leila: I mean, it's never too early to get started, right?

[music in: Jon Björk - A Bard’s Minuet]

Leila: So basically, in the 13th century in England, the king had just funded the Crusades War. So coming out of that, England was really poor and they thought, “We need to regain some money, so we're going to put a tax on wool.”

Leila: And they did that. It was called The Great Custom. And essentially, the King would take a third of all the wool a farmer produced. And then the church, because the church owned the land, would take a third. And you'd end up with only a third to yourself to share around the community.

Leila: So you can see that people have hated taxes for literally centuries.

Wow.

Leila: Would you believe that it's not the only nursery rhyme about tax?

[Harp Sting]

British Narrator: Jack and Jill.

I don't know it as a song. I know like, “Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water.”

Leila: “Jack came down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after.”

[music in: Jerry Lacey - In My Arms]

Leila: So Jack and Jill was a spoken rhyme, which originated in England, where the word “crown” can also mean your head.

Leila: So because of that, a lot of people think that the nursery rhyme is actually about Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who famously met their ends at the end of the French Revolution by losing their heads.

Ohhhhh.

Leila: As in, “broke his crown,” well, broke his crown completely off. Either his head crown or his crown crown. Both happened.

Leila VO: But there are a few holes in this interpretation.

Leila: The nursery rhyme came before that event, so it probably wasn't anything to do with beheading. It was just about tax.

Okay, good.

[music in: Bonnie Grace - Peace in the Realm]

Leila: So King Charles I in England wanted to increase the taxes on another very commonly purchased commodity, alcohol. Taxing alcohol, not a popular thing to do.

Leila: So instead of actually raising the taxes on alcohol, what he did was... formally reduce the size of certain measures of alcohol. So, in England, at that time, you could buy a “jack,” which was about a quarter of a pint of alcohol.

Okay.

Leila: But what the king did was reduce the size of a jack down to an eighth of a pint. So you would actually be getting less. But you'd still be paying the same tax on a jack. So, “Jack fell down.”

Leila: And then, there's another measure of alcohol, which is defined as twice a jack. It's called a “jill”.

Got it.

Leila: So because a jill is always twice a jack, that had to come down as well. So “Jill came tumbling after.”

Wow. That is so awesomely British.

Leila: So, people like to satirize, to really, take the mickey out of British rulers because you've got no power against them. So all we can do is make satire about them.

Leila: So here's another satirical one…

[Harp Sting]

British Narrator: Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.

Leila: “Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row.” Sounds nice, doesn't it?

You know that sounds really nice from my perspective, on this side of the world.

Leila: Yeah, so according to some scholars, it's probably about torture.

Oh no.

Leila: Oh no.

Oh, British people.

[laughs]

[music in: Lennon Hutton - Granny]

Leila: So Queen Mary the first of England, also known as Bloody Mary, she was maniacal and terrible. And she would just execute people who didn't agree with her religious ideals.

Leila: So the silver bells and cockle shells are actually referring to implements to cause pain, sad to say.

Ugggh.

Leila: I know. And you know, it might not be true, it might be people spinning history, but there’s a good theory that that’s what that’s was about originally.

That's terrifying. I'm cool with removing that from my um… my album.

Leila: Okay, great. I'm not here to cancel it, but, you know, believe what you want to believe.

Leila: And there's another famous one that's been twisted by history.

[Harp Sting]

British Narrator: Humpty Dumpty.

“Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.”

Leila: “All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again.”

[music in: Playtime - Don’t Wak'em Up]

Leila: So what do you visualize in your mind when you say that rhyme?

I mean, I visualize all the illustrations that I've seen in nursery rhyme books, where there's a literal egg with eyes and a big smile, sitting on a wall, with arms and legs, and that Humpty Dumpty [sfx] falls and cracks, and a little bit of the egg comes out…

Leila: [chuckles] Lovely, lovely visual there.

Leila: Where does it say in the rhyme that he's an egg?

Oh, uh, oh, oh.

[laughs]

Leila: Just gonna to blow your mind a little bit there.

Ah, wow! It does not say anything about an egg.

Leila: Why is an egg man sitting on a wall?

What are the illustrators up to?

[music in: Ludvig Moulin - Caution Wet Floor]

Leila: It actually comes from Lewis Carroll, who wrote Alice in Wonderland, he wrote a follow up novel called Through the Looking Glass. And there was a character in there called Humpty Dumpty who was inspired by the nursery rhyme.

Leila: And just like the disappearing Cheshire Cat and the pocket watch wielding rabbit,, Carol imagined Humpty as a fantastical creature... In this case, an anthropomorphic egg. And somehow, the image stuck.

Leila: But the truth is almost as weird.

[music in: John Abbot - British Grenadiers]

Leila: The origin is thought to be from the 17th century, and Humpty dumpty was a siege cannon.

A siege cannon?

Leila: Yeah, a cannon.

Like a,“put a big thing in it and shoot it?”

Leila: Mmhmm! A big heavy ball in it, and shoot it to knock down a building.

Oh!

Leila: At the time, England was in the middle of a civil war.

[war sounds]

Leila: Humpty Dumpty was actually a cannon that the King's forces took to the top of a church tower to shoot at the opposing side in the war.

Leila: But at one point, the gun fell down from the tower, and broke.

Leila: And then all the king's horses and all the king's men, they couldn't put this gun back together again. So, not an egg, actually a massive cannon.

An adorable sounding canon.

[laughs]

Leila: It does sound pretty cute, doesn't it?

[Harp Sting]

British Narrator: Ring Around the Rosie.

[music box music in]

Leila: “Ring around the rosie. A pocket full of posies. Ashes, ashes, we all fall down.“

[music box music in]

Leila: In England we know a slightly different version that ends: “A tissue, a tissue, we all fall down.”

This is going to be terrible. I know it.

Leila: Well, one theory is, it’s about the Great Plague of London in 1665.

[music in: Rikard From - The Beginning of a Fairy Tale]

Leila: This was an outbreak of bubonic plague that killed a quarter of the population of London in less than a year.

Leila: So, “Ring around the rosie.” Plague sufferers would get red rings on their skin.

Ugggh.

Leila: “A pocket full of posies.” Posies are flowers, little bunches of flowers in your pockets to hide the scent of very ill and dying people.

Ugggh. Okay.

Leila: “A tissue, a tissue,” to mop up the sneezes or the various other bodily fluids.

Leila: Alternatively, “ashes” could be the remains of those poor souls after cremation.

Leila: And “We all fall down.” I think you don't need me to explain that one.

That’s horrifying.

Leila: That’s terrible, isn't it?

[music out]

Leila: However, it might not be about that.

Bring me back up.

Leila: It might just be religion.

Okay.

Leila: So the actual nursery rhyme itself might not date from that time. It wasn't written way back in 1665, so there's a good chance that it was written about a religious ban on dancing.

[music in: Magnus Ludvigsson - Valse Provençal]

Leila: During the 19th Century, England experienced quite strong religious persecution, where all forms of singing and dancing were banned.

Leila: And children still wanna dance. So they would get around it with these things called play parties. And essentially, they would just claim that they were children and they were playing and came up with a way of singing and dancing to it.

Leila: And there are other records of the nursery rhyme with a much less sinister lyric.

Oh really?

Leila: So it goes, “A ring a ring of roses, a pocketful of posies. One for Jack, and one for Jim, and one for little Moses. A curtsy in and a curtsy out, and a curtsy all together.”

Leila: So it was a way of kids getting around this religious restriction on dancing and having fun.

Ohhh.

Leila: Which is a much nicer takeaway, I think.

Still shadowed in darkness.

It really, makes a much more complex spin on reciting these or singing these to children, ‘cause you can't unhear it once you know the story behind it.

Leila: I know. Sorry. [laughs] [Harp Sting]

British Narrator: Pop Goes the Weasel.

Leila: Today, there are quite a few versions of this out there, but the original goes like this. [Jack in the box music]

Leila: “Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle. That's the way the money goes, pop goes the weasel.”

[Jack in the box music out]

Leila: And in case you've never heard of it, “treacle” is a bit like molasses.

So it's like bread and milk.

Leila: Sure. It's just a shopping list. “Pop goes the weasel.”

Let me guess on this. Okay, so we're going to the market. We're getting our basics. “Pop goes the weasel.” It almost sounds a little bit like, “And Bob's your uncle.”

Leila: I suppose it does. Yeah.

Leila: I never thought I'd be doing so much English to English translation here. "And Bob's your uncle" means something like, "And there you have it."

Leila: But “pop goes the weasel” is not a phrase in the UK like “Bob's your uncle.” It makes no sense here, either.

Leila: But it might mean something to a few specific groups.

Leila: So a weasel is a tool used by cloth spinners to measure out a particular length of yarn. [sfx] It spins, and then when it's done, it goes pop [sfx]. Almost like a typewriter, like, [sfx] da da da da da da, and then you've got your ding [sfx] at the end.

Okay.

[music in: Cercles Nouveles - Old Britannia]

Leila: So, one of the theories is that this is a rhyme that's like a yarn spinner's mind wandering to their daily tasks whilst they're doing their job.

Oh!

Leila: So they're just like, [sfx] “Okay, what have I got to get at the store? Uh, half a pound of tupperware rice, half a pound of treacle. [sfx] Oh! There's my yarn. It's finished.” Pop goes the weasel. And there are more verses of other things going on.

Do they all stay, like, “mind wandery” or do they go to like a dark British place?

Leila: Yeah, so once you hear the other verses, that explanation kind of falls apart.

Oh gosh, here we go again.

Leila: The other interpretation relies on an intimate knowledge of cockney rhyming slang.

Leila: And this is where, again, I'm sorry it's super British, but “a weasel and a stoat” is cockney rhyming slang for a coat. So “to wear a coat” is to wear your weasel and stoat. And to “pop” something, is to sell at a pawn shop.

Leila: So, let me sing that verse again. “Half a pound of tuppenny rice, half a pound of treacle. That's the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.”

Leila: So this is where it's slightly dark. “I have to buy my daily shopping list. My money is now gone…”

Yeah.

Leila: “Pop goes the weasel. I have to pawn my coat.”

Ooh! Gosh, it does make sense. It was so wholesome there for a moment…

Leila: I know.

And I was like, “Great! Alright, we got one.”

Leila: Nope.

And then it’s sorrowful again.

Leila: Next verse is, “Up and down the city road, in and out the eagle. That's the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.”

Leila: So, The Eagle is a pub in London, City Road in London.

Oh!

Leila: So you're going into the pub, out of the pub. Your money's gone again. “Pop goes the weasel.” Pawn your coat again.

[music in: Arden Forest - Notice]

I think the thing that's really jumping out is the amount of sorrow and pain and melancholy behind many of these.

And to have something that's an oral tradition many people are singing something like this, I suspect that that was very cathartic for people. To know that like, “Okay, everyone's dealing with these taxes. Many people lost their lives or during this terrible period.”

Leila: And I think including it as a children's song gives it the opportunity to have this kind of naivety filter. It's cathartic to the adults who are singing it. But to a child, it's just nice sounds, they're good words. It’s like the best kind of therapy.

Leila: And that's something that we are still echoing back to our children, however many hundreds of years later.

Right. It's like an echo of history that we're still repeating, even if we don't really know the root of the echo.

Leila: Okay, well I'm gonna do a little pivot on the emotions now, ‘cause a lot of those nursery rhymes are historical. They are dating back hundreds of years. But a lot of the songs that we sing to our kids these days are not that old.

[music in: Megan Wofford - A Sky Unveiled]

Leila: So once you get into the 20th century, you start to get songs that appear to be written just for children, which is quite nice. It's a nice change.

Leila: Just like those historical nursery rhymes, these newer children’s songs have some pretty surprising backstories. But they’re also shaped by changing technology. Once we got recorded music, radio, film and television, kids music would never be the same.

Leila: That’s coming up after the break.

MIDROLL 2

[Harp Sting]

American Narrator: Hush, little baby.

Leila: “Hush little baby, don't say a word. Mama's gonna buy you a mockingbird. And if that mockingbird don't sing, Mama's gonna buy you a diamond ring.”

And I'm really sorry, but because of all of what we just talked about, I like don't trust you at this point. Like “mama” is some bloody king of something back in the day, and…

Leila: I feel like I've broken you, Dallas.

You've broken me. Like, “Everything has a hidden meaning now!”

Leila: No, honestly, this is just a nice little song to sing to your baby.

You promise?

Leila: I promise.

[music in: Howard Harper-Barnes: Hush Little Baby [piano version]] Leila: The format is perfectly adapted for parents to make up whatever they can think of to rhyme, right?

Right.

Leila: But most people sing one particular version. And that's because that was the one version that was recorded back in 1937.

Leila: So prior to that point, it was an oral history entirely. It was, you know, traded off. You'd hear different things that you're going to buy your baby to soothe them. It was the same sense, but it was a much more fluid kind of folk song.

Leila: And that's the case for a lot of the older nursery rhymes. They changed with every retelling.

Leila: When the tune and lyrics to “Hush Little Baby” were first written down in 1918, there were already at least two versions out there. This one from Virginia...

[Hush Little Baby - Lucy Cannady version]

Leila: And this one from North Carolina...

[Hush Little Baby - Julie Boone version]

Leila: But that all changed with the advent of audio recording.

Leila: In 1937, there was a wax cylinder recording made of an African American woman in Alabama singing it. And she sings a set of lyrics that, as far as I know, that is the official version now.

[clip: Annie Brewer - Hush Little Baby recording]

Leila: Billy goats, bulls and carts. This is not the world we're living in right now, but this is still the song that we're singing our children because that folk song was frozen in time.

[music in: Franz Gordon - Morning Blues]

I love the glimpse that it was less than a hundred years ago, and that little snapshot, and how much the world has changed so quickly.

Leila: It's kind of a two way thing. Like, I wonder if maybe things would be a bit more creative if it wasn't for that recording, ‘cause we wouldn't still be singing about oxen, carts and bulls and billy goats and things like that.

Leila: But we can't turn back the hands of time, and once recording was out there, it sparked a whole new industry: Music made specifically for children.

Leila: So essentially, what entertainment artists at this point are doing is seeing what works for kids, and using it commercially.

Leila: And that's where kids music really breaks out into the big leagues.

Leila: So where before, a lot of things were nursery rhymes, and it was just a rhyme, or the poem...

Leila: In the 20th century, you get more musical stuff, because that’s what sells records.

Leila: Once recording became common, children’s musicians started using and reusing certain musical formulas.

[Harp Sting]

American Narrator: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

Leila: You started by saying that “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” was your go to song when you…

Oh, don't ruin that for me.

[laughs]

Leila: It's not ruined. I promise it's not ruined. But there's a reason you went to it, and that's because it permeates our minds. Uh, sing it for me?

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky…”

Leila: “A-B-C-D-E-F-G, H-I-J-K-L-N-O-P, Q-R-S-T-U-V, W-X-Y and Z…”

[overdub with Leila's ABC song]

Leila: It's the same tune!

Right!

Leila: “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” “ABC,” same tune. Also, to some extent, “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep,” which may have once been written as a poem, but has now come to that same tune.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…”

Leila: “Baah baah black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.”

[overdub with Leila’s Baa Baa Black Sheep]

Leila: Another new phenomenon was pop cultural music that got repurposed as children’s songs.

[Harp Sting]

American Narrator: Skinnamarink.

Leila: This is a complete education for me, because prior to you telling me about this, I have never heard of that song. And it's the best. And I got stuck in my head for like three weeks.

I sing this all the time. I love singing it because I get to say “I love you” over and over and over again. And I guess I'm gonna have to sing it.

Leila: By all means, go for it.

“Skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo, I love you. Skinnamarinky dinky dink skinnamarinky doo, I love you."

“Skinnamarinky dinky dink, skinnamarinky doo. I love you. I love you. I love you Name Redacted. I love you. You're daddy's sweetheart. I love you. A too. A boop boop bee doo.” Mwah. And I kiss him on the head.

Leila: Oh my God! That's so adorable.

And I cannot believe that I'm doing that for a hundred thousand plus people on a microphone.

Leila: Love it. I love it.

[laughs]

[music in: Franz Gordon - Take Away the Blues]

Leila: See, that is what having a kid does to you.

Exactly.

Leila: No self-esteem issues.

Nope. I don't care about looking like a dork anymore. I kind of embrace it.

Leila: I honestly think that looking like a dork is the best thing you can do for yourself, because people get to see what you're passionate about. And if they don't like that, then they don't like you, and they don't deserve to be in your life.

I want to just clip that and put it on a poster on my wall. I love it.

Leila: Be the dork you wanna be!

Leila Chat Extra: Anyway, all dorkiness aside, back to Skinnamarink.

Leila: It's entirely a North American thing. It came from a Broadway show in 1910 called The Echo, which was about mermaids. And the lyrics were slightly different, but the idea is that “skinnamarinky dinky dink” in mermaid language means, “I love you.”

Oh!

Leila: Here’s the original version, from a Youtube channel called Sheet Music Singer.

[clip: Sheet Music Singer - Skinnamarink]

Leila: So the sense is still preserved, and then commercialization happened and there was a Canadian kids show in the 80s that used it in their ending credits.

[clip: Sharon, Louis and Bram - Skinnamarink]

Leila: And then they named an ice rink after it. SkinnamaRINKY dinky dink. That’s amazing.

[laughs]

Leila: Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Leila: As the 20th century went on, the market for kid’s entertainment grew and grew. Over the years, many of the songs from these movies and TV shows have been adopted by parents as lullabies.

[pop culture lullaby medley]

Leila: In recent years, some kids’ songs have become just as iconic as the biggest pop hits. Need I say any more than “Baby Shark?”

[clip: brief Baby Shark + button click]

Nope nope nope nope nope. We’re not playing a clip of that.

Leila: But today, artists are going a step further.

Leila: Recently in the UK, a couple of companies have started to think about actually developing songs that are specifically designed to soothe babies. So these are kind of scientific baby songs. And honestly, so far they seem to work.

[Drift sneaks in]

Leila: So, there's one song called “Drift,” and it's been created by the British Academy of Sound Therapy and the supermarket chain Aldi.

Leila: And they designed it with all the elements that are supposed to help a baby get to sleep.

Leila: It’s got no lyrics at all. The idea is that lyrics will overstimulate a baby. They'll find them too interesting.

[beat for music]

Leila: You've got slowly drifting chords at 50 beats per minute.

[beat for music]

Leila: You've got a low frequency soundscape of white noise and kind of bubbly music. Like womb sounds make it sound like a baby's still in the womb.

[beat for music]

Leila: It's this five minute track and you play it, basically it makes your baby fall asleep. And if they don't fall asleep, then you get to play it again.

[beat for music]

Leila: I remember when my little one was really small, this was the only thing that would settle him to sleep. Between me and all the people I recommended it to, I think I must be responsible for about a million plays.

Leila: But that's not the only carefully crafted kids song.

Leila: There's another one which is definitely going to get stuck in your head. “The Happy Song,” by Imogen Heap.

I have heard of it, but been scared to press play on it.

Leila: [laughs] I mean, do so with caution, because it is catchy as heck.