The hills of Britain are alive with the sound of music – as are the gardens, Alphabetti Spaghetti-spattered kitchens and heaving motorways, if our Spotify Family subscription competition is anything to go to by. Thank you so much for your avalanche of entries, which have been blasting and banging through my Lego-strewn living room, showing me just how loud and proud all you couples, parents and kids are about the music choices you make.
Many of you appear to be altruistic, democratic souls. Take Diane Leeming’s family, who “take turns choosing” when they have their “car disco”. This is hard when your family consists of “a three-year-old punk, a five-year-old junglist, a music fascist dad and ex indie-kid/raver mum”. But their playlist – featuring They Might Be Giants, Jax Jones and Bernard Cribbins’ Right Said Fred – was a delight.
Bernice Soutter’s gang also like playlists that don’t “feel like the kids’ music on repeat” – so Eels and Depeche Mode snuggle up to Ed Sheeran and DNCE’s Cake By the Ocean, and it works.
Music was also able to bring very different family members together, as I hoped it would. I adored Brian McPartlan’s three-year-attempt to get a playlist to work for his EDM-loving self and his country-loving wife – and he built a cracker, finishing with the brilliant pairing of Jain’s Makeba and Sinead O’Connor’s Mandinka.
I loved how Caroline Repton had got into Arctic Monkeys thanks to her daughters and one of them now loved Toots and the Maytals, who Caroline had seen live in her youth, while another tried to introduce Mum to Paul Simon, although Mum knew him already.
Mark Phillips also described the toughness of fusing together a nine-year-old’s tastes with those of a 46-year-old brilliantly. “Nothing beats the experience, though, when stuck in traffic … of one of our shared jams coming on, and us shouting in unison”, he says, before going into full Miley Cyrus/Party in the USA mode. “And the Jay-Z song was on … and the Jay-Z song was onnnn!”
Family playlists can also serve quieter functions. I enjoyed lovely, easy Sunday afternoon choices from Luke Stockdale, which he plays for his wife and toddler (Sigur Rós, Otis Redding, Tame Impala), plus the lulling beginning of Dino Cafolla’s top 10 (Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere, Arcade Fire’s Reflektor), which then thrashed wildly into life with Metallica’s The Unforgiven.
“There is a full spectrum here for the calm Sunday afternoon trying not to wake the baby to arms-in-the-air headbanging,” he put it, correctly. For his family, “with so much choice and everyday use, Spotify has become a must-have, like a kettle, toaster or bottle steriliser”.
Popular choices? Katy Perry, alt-J, Justin Timberlake, the Beatles, Frank Ocean, David Bowie. Sadly, there’s only one mention for Peter Tosh’s Nah Goa Jail (thank you kindly, Duncan Wain’s two-year-old, reggae-loving son).
But my winner’s crown goes to Steve Jones, whose family I could totally see dancing to Lovecats by the Cure – “my daughter is obsessed”; moody ones for their teenage son – “he knows all the words to Twenty One Pilots’ Heathens, and Disclosure and AlunaGeorge’s White Noise”; and Plastic Bertrand’s Ça Plane Pour Moi – “my wife chose it hoping some French would rub off on the kids, but they just shout the chorus”.
I also heartily agreed with the Bangles’ Walk Like an Egyptian having “all the actions to go with it, which is great while speeding down the M5”. And, yes, Steve, Uptown Funk does the job every time.
All the songs have “one thing in common – no swearing and being able to sing your heart out to them”, Dad added, and here’s to many more motorway singalongs for his lot.
I’ll be hoping to keep up with the Joneses myself.
