Rockabye Baby Lullabies

No babies are in my zillion-year plan, so I'm not part of the target market for the Rockabye Baby! albums: parents who are afraid changing diapers and instituting time-outs will drain every bit of "cool" out of them (and they're pretty sure they remember once being very cool and even liking the rock they listened to).

Surely foisting lighter-than-air lullaby versions of songs by Radiohead on a baby will both lull them to sleep while subtly indoctrinating them into the ways of Rock. In so doing, it could even help form a Rock-solid bond of musical kinship between parents and child. They might not want to listen to her favorite music in the car or take her to concerts if she ends up loving some lesser kind of music. And if the lullaby CDs really do their job, the kid's talent nights should be blissfully violin-free!

On the other hand, my own rock mom was raised in a house chock full of violins. What's more "rock" than rebellion?

For all my skepticism about whether the Rockabye Baby -- oops -- Rockabye Baby! (wonder if they considered calling them Rockabye Baby!! and thought, "No, too much") work to make kids love rock, the ones I've heard do at least have some entertainment value. They're sometimes uneven as to how well I think they'd work as a lullaby, and even how much they sound like the original (the version of U2's "Desire" is off on both counts). But some are quite good -- maybe for lulling insomniacs to sleep, if not babies.

And the first time you heard Tool's "Sober", you probably thought, "This is pretty good, but I bet it'd be even better as a lullaby." Hey, we all did.

The Rockabye Baby! series currently includes, the aforementioned Radiohead, The Beach Boys, Björk, Black Sabbath, Bob Marley, No Doubt, U2, The Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure, The Pixies, Tool, Nirvana, Coldplay, Metallica, The Ramones, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, The Beatles, Queens of the Stone Age, and Nine Inch Nails.

Rockabye Baby! - No Surprises (on Lullaby Renditions of Radiohead)

Rockabye Baby! - Tonight, Tonight (on Lullaby Renditions of The Smashing Pumpkins)

Rockabye Baby! - Sunday Bloody Sunday (on Lullaby Renditions of U2)