I’m Crowd-Sourcing My Daughter’s iPod Playlist Because Music For Girls Sucks

I need to get my daughter some music that doesn’t suck. And it has to be GIRL music, because my 8-year-old has enough BOY music and Mommmmmm, she totally needs girl music, you know, like girls, like cool girls, like you know the girls that her girls listen to at school, mmkay?

But see the issue is, all the shit her little friends listen to at school sucks. I have decided it sucks based on the fact that I have heard snippets of some of these artists on the radio and because I had a long talk with Koa about this recently and we decided that all girl music these days sucks. What is popular amongst the third grade set? Katy Perry.

Yeah, yeah, I know, Katy seems like a nice person. She speaks out against bullying. She wears cool wigs. But then she has questionable lyrics like:

Take me, take me
Wanna be a victim
Ready for abduction

And when you are trying to raise a kickass young feminist exposing her to shit like this doesn’t really help the cause. Yeah, I know music, and sometimes the best music, has questionable lyrics and I know it’s only rock and roll and all that but the whole California Gurls video with the cupcake tits and vapid sparkle faux commercialism of Perry irks me. I can download my kid all of the Shirelles and The Ronettes, select recordings from Siouxsie And The Banshees,The Go-Gos, Joan Jett and Missy Elliott, but she wants junk that her little classmates listen to. Stuff like Taylor Swift that I know nothing about, except a lot of it seems to be focused on boy problems. Lame.

And don’t get me started on that whole Kidz Bop bullshit because as questionable and lame as some of these original “hits” are, having them sung by kids with these racy lyrics changed just makes them a gazillion times more annoying.
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 Nicki Minaj, who I can totally appreciate in many regards, has a song entitled “Stupid Hoe.” Gwen Stefani, who is so great in so many ways and who I have exposed my daughter to all ready (She has dolls! She is pretty yet smart! She is a mommy and also designs clothing!) recently made a music video that had some truly questionable cultural appropriation in it, so I’m no longer supporting that nonsense.  Gaga is okay in some ways. Janelle Monae is amazing but my kid is the only kid who knows who she is, so my kid loses cool points because none of her little friends know who she is talking about. The same with M.I.A. 

I know discovering music that your parents hate and deciding what you like on your own is one of the best parts about growing up. Yet I also know that I learned about Bowie and The Stones and other bands from my own parents and with my sons it’s easy (They aren’t as insistent about wanting music by artists that share their gender), it’s just that my daughter is looking for female artists and other than some old school stuff and some carefully chosen newer stuff I’m having a hard time helping her discover GIRL music that we both can approve of. She is getting pretty bored with Adele and the Salt-N-Pepa songs that aren’t “Let’s Talk About Sex.”

I know other parents let their babies listen to things that are popular and “cool” but I just can’t get behind my own kid singing along about her “panties comin’ off.” I tried to convince my daughter that this was cool and even though she really liked the dress and the video, I’m not sure it gets a lot of play on her nano.

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What are other parents of young girls doing? Should I just give in and get her the “clean” versions of CDs and hope she loses interest in some of these pop-tarts and discovers Exene Cervenka on her own? I may be over-thinking this and I should probably just buy her all of the other junk her pals are into, but I feel like I owe it to her to at least make an effort in discovering stuff that has a better message than:

Sex on the beach We’ve got white sand in our stilettos We freak in my jeep!

(Photo: You Tube)