For no apparent reason — other than, you know, I’m about to be a dad — I got to thinking the other night about great baby songs.
How charming Stevie Wonder’s “Isn’t She Lovely” is, for instance, though I can rarely sit through the full version of it, when for several minutes we hear Stevie’s baby girl Aisha laughing and splashing around the bathtub. Glad they never play that part on K-EARTH.
“You Are My Sunshine” — that’s a given. The Supremes’ “Baby Love” — seems logical, but actually a terrible baby song, if you ask me.
But how ’bout the way people adapt love songs as hymns for their kiddies?
Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” is a common one (must be all those boisterous “I love you, baby!” choruses), and reading Suzanne Broughton’s post about her daughter’s birthday on the Mom Blog made me realize just how many parents prefer Elton John’s timeless “Your Song.” Although Garth Brooks‘ rendition of Dylan’s “To Make You Feel My Love,” as one commenter suggested — OK, that one mostly works, and I sing the Carpenters‘ “Close to You” to my boy, so who am I to judge? But there’s something about a few of those lines that conveys so much passion … I dunno … I might have a hard time singing it to a baby.
Ultimately, the more I pondered it, the more I kept coming back to the most obvious — the most sheerly moving, the most lullaby perfect — of all baby songs: “Baby Mine.”
Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.
Originally from Walt Disney’s Dumbo – which, if you can get through without crying, indicates that you have a heart of stone — the song has been covered and covered and covered. And not just by the folks you know — Bette Midler, whose take is the epitome of motherly, or Alison Krauss, angelic as ever, or my fave choice, Bonnie Raitt’s gently soulful take, which strolls out like a lazy afternoon in a rocking chair.
Search the song on YouTube, however, and you’ll find scores of montages set to it. Which kinda makes me hate “Baby Mine” a little. But then I watched the above clip, with the Divine Miss M singing so tenderly … and I started to feel my eyes well up all over again.
I’m gonna be such a bawling mess once Sam actually gets here.
I love Bonnie Raitt’s version of Baby Mine.
I also sing Paul McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” but like this, “You think that people would have had enough of silly babies. I look around me and I see it isn’t so. Oh, no. Some people want to fill the world with silly babies. What’s wrong with that? I’d like to know…” Absolutely nothing as far as I’m concerned.
I love this: ” my fave choice, Bonnie Raitt’s gently soulful take, which strolls out like a lazy afternoon in a rocking chair.”
My favorite song to sing my son, Ben, when he was little was “Mighty Like a Rose,” which my mother and grandmother sang to me. The lyric “with eyes so shiny blue” had to be changed to “eyes so shiny hazel” which involved rhyming with basil. It always made us laugh.