One of the joys of having a four year-old is their insistence that we listen to whatever they want to in the car. This is usually the Frozen soundtrack for the nine hundredth time. (“Love is an open dooooooooor”) Thankfully most of our journeys are fifteen minutes or so, so we don’t usually get as far as the creepy trolls’ song where they insinuate bestiality. (“His thing with the reindeer, that’s a little outside of nature’s laws…”)
Recently, however, EldestGirl has started extolling the virtues of Little Mix, who appear to be a pop group simultaneously aimed at small children, and also include lots of raunchy lyrics that EldestGirl doesn’t understand. Yet.
I would like to say I am disapproving of Little Mix in general. Of course we all hope our four year-old will gravitate naturally towards Beethoven or Gershwin or Minchin at the very least. But actually, some of Little Mix’s songs are actually OK. And this one, this one is brilliant. Humour me. Listen to this song. Properly listen to it. Try not to watch the video too much though as the band members seem incredibly annoying. Shut your eyes or something.
Now, it’s a long time, thankfully, since I have needed a good breakup song, but I think that Shout Out to my Ex may be the karaoke break-up song of choice replacing Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive for drunk women in their twenties everywhere.
It’s a song actually of someone who is so NOT over their ex that they actually write a song about it, yet it’s full of hope for the future (and a slight desire to show off their new life to the person who dumped them). Perfect. It’s also not a terrible message to four year-olds about resilience and how life doesn’t always turn out how you expect, but sometimes it’s for the best. To be honest, I’m not sure she gets that subtlety though. She thinks the song is about shouting to an “X” as in “marks the spot” from a pirate treasure map.
Of course, I tell EldestGirl that the song is a load of rubbish, but if she’s really, really good at the supermarket, we can listen to it one more time on the way home. And I might roll the windows down and we can all sing along.
Beethoven can wait another week.
Note of caution – little mix live at the O2 is definitely a terrible idea for 4yr olds (Dan at 35 however, couldn’t get enough of their ‘message’!!!!)
Yes, we’re are currently blissfully aware of any such thing as live gigs. The panto is about as close as she’s got so far, and if she’s good, when she’s 12 I’ll take her to see some Shakespeare.
L x