Is Kid Music Good for My Baby?

I recently had some friends visit with their nine-month-old, and they sang and played baby/kid songs for her, like Raffi and Ms. Rachel. It made me realize my parents did that for me, but we don’t do it for our baby (six months). We do play him music that we like, we sing lullabies to him before bed, and we talk to him a lot, but we don’t seek out kid-focused media yet. I read your post about how educational TV programs don’t have much effect until kids are 3-5, so I’ve assumed those learnings apply here and we don’t need to be playing kid-oriented songs for our baby … right? But now the question is nagging at me — why does kid-focused music exist, and is it beneficial? Do we just assume they will only understand someone who dresses and sounds more like them, or is that true? Do our babies feel calmer or safer listening to people sing simplified songs or talk in high-pitched voices? Do they learn more that way? What’s the deal?

—Musically Confused

This is a very interesting question! There are two big distinctions between songs “for” children and regular songs.

The first, perhaps obvious, one is that songs for children typically do not include explicit or inappropriate lyrics. This relates closely to your comment on age. As your kids get into the older 2s and 3 age range, it’s time to be more careful about language, since they will start repeating it. It may be fine to play the explicit version of the song “WAP” around your infant, but you don’t want to do that with your 4-year-old.

Also, as kids get into this range and they start to want to sing and mimic, they’ll often gravitate toward the simpler melodies and words of kids’ songs. As much as you might wish your child will gravitate toward singing your favorite songs from the Decemberists, you will actually be listening to them sing “Let It Go,” in an off-key manner like the rest of us.

Your baby is little, though, and this is a long way off. For babies, there is a large baby-music-industrial complex that would seemingly have you believe that your child must listen to songs with a particular high-pitched timbre. In many cases, these are adult songs re-recorded in a different style — “Yellow Submarine,” but in a high-pitched, more singsong tone.

Some researchers wondered, as you did, whether babies actually like this better. So they tested it! This study played music for kids, either original versions of songs or versions that were “re-orchestrated” in the baby style. They measured which one babies paid more attention to, which is the standard measure of whether babies like things. It turned out there was no difference in their response. Babies were equally happy with both kinds of music.

Conclusion: you are doing fine. So are your friends! Any music is great.