Story of my son’s musical journey so far

My son's journey started immediately after birth. As he entered the new world he was crying furiously. Perhaps all the time he heard his dad singing when he was in the womb paid off and when he heard myself singing John Lennon’s Beautiful Boy he immediately stopped crying and locked eye contact with myself. During the early stages of his life, I thought it was a good opportunity to finally complete a discography listen of Brian Eno’s career, in particular his ambient work which I haven’t completely explored previously. The rationale was that now that we have a newborn baby, perhaps having some easy-listening background music would have a calming effect. However, the reality was that it had a relatively neutral effect on the baby and wasn’t as calming and soothing as anything else. However soon I learnt that anything with a strong rhythm or beat, he responded well to. While I can’t speak for other parent’s experience with newborns, I do wonder whether this is universal. I speculate that when the foetus is in the womb, it will hear a loud rhythmic heartbeat as well as breathing and will regularly feel the mother walking around. Therefore, music with a strong emphasis on the beat that you can move and dance to will have a soothing effect as it replicates the environment of the womb. This created a switch of me playing highly energetic music to help soothe the baby and get it to sleep. I became the expert in getting the baby to sleep by putting energetic music on and then carrying the baby and starting to dance around the room. We often joke that he is my ballroom dancing partner. By the end of it, he will be fast asleep. I was far more likely to get the baby to sleep having something like AC/DC playing than gentle music. Hard rock/heavy metal, techno/electronic, and funk music were my son's initial taste in music. It became a regular game of me putting on music like Spark’s Tryout For The Human Race and then moving his arms and legs and creating dance/disco moves while he is lying in bed which normally results in him laughing and smiling. One thing I was proud of was playing King Crimson 21st Century Schizoid Man while holding my son jumping around the room headbanging and then during the extended instrumental jam, I started doing a Stravinsky-esque The Rite Of Spring-like dance. When the solo finished, and the heavy riff returned my son was fast asleep. Of course, while any music with a beat he responds to. There were certain songs that he responded well melodically. His number one favourite song as a baby was Anna (Go To Him) by The Beatles. He responded well hearing me belt out “All Of My Life, I’ve been searching for a girl” which resulted in sudden eye contact and him moving his mouth in sync with my singing. It became the number one song we played trying to soothe him and often he will stop crying even before we pick him up and dance if that song is playing. The bridge section becomes the common song I sing to calm him down. What’s funny is that his most hated song is the very next track on the album Please Please Me which is Chains. Whenever Anna (Go To Him) ends it goes automatically to the next song in the album and when he hears the opening harmonica he starts crying. He just wants to hear Anna (Go To Him) again and again and gets upset when another song interrupts him. As a result, we would often have that song on repeat/loop so that he could hear that song indefinitely. Now just when I thought I could start indoctrinating my son to my music taste. Unfortunately, my wife introduced him to nursery rhymes and children’s songs. Now his favourite songs are stuff like “Five Finger Family”, “Wheels On The Bus”, and “Baby Shark” and his favourite artist is “D Billions” which is a Kyrgyzstan kid's music group. Whenever I have music playing, my son completely ignores it but whenever a child's song is playing, he becomes interested. While lamenting my lack of influence on his music taste, there is a side benefit that it accelerated his language development and most likely contributed to his ability to say words and talk as his early words are often lyrics from songs such as “Where Are You” from Finger family or “round and round”. Now you can see him humming melodies from the song and he will make dance gestures from those songs. Ie. Bring out his hands and look at it when Finger family is on, or move his arms in a circle during the “round and round”. Now even when music isn’t playing he will walk around and occasionally hum those tunes. Despite being less than two years old it’s remarkably somewhat in tune. When we sing part of the song and then stop, he will attempt to complete the line. Bizarrely though one children's song he hates which is “Happy Birthday’ and he cries when we sing that song which is a trait I hope he grows with when he is older. Despite him having a different taste of music so far. I can identify similar music-listening traits to myself. If I abruptly stop the music he will cry out and throw a tantrum which mirrors my irritability if someone interrupts or forces me to stop playing music. It’s pretty clear that he has a developed imagination and that he often daydreams and plays those songs in his head. During childcare the staff will take pictures of them reading children's stories, my son will often be distracted and looking at his hand. He is daydreaming and playing the finger family song in his head. This mirrors myself daydreaming and playing music in my head at school, and university not listening to the teacher or lecturers. So, despite him ignoring 99.9% of “adult music”, I think currently he is a children’s music nerd which is a good prognosis that he’ll become a full-on music nerd when he is older. Regarding the 0.1% of “adult music” that he likes. The Beatle’s Anna (Go To Him) remains a special song. When I sing the bridge of the song and reach the part “What am I, what am I supposed to do?”, he will reply “na, na, na, na, na” to the same melody/tune of “Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh”. This is the one remaining song that we can bond together and where there is overlap in our music taste. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3zNKWyLfus