No ‘Frozen’ allowed on family car trips
Kate Robertson has a G-rated offering featuring absolutely no Frozen music.
Family road trips are great. Fighting over the music is not. When kids are young it feels like an endless cycle of Now That’s What I Call Vol. 1276 and *insert hit Disney soundtrack of the moment*. When kids get a bit older, the divide between young and old grows even more heated.
Mum wants James Blunt, Dad wants The Police. Mum hates The Police and Dad hates James Blunt. Kid One loves Kendrick Lamar and Kid Two loves Little Mix. Mum and Dad hate Kendrick Lamar and Little Mix.
No-one wins, ever.
But, there are solutions to the endless debate and whinging from the kids in the back seat (‘‘Play Despacito already Daaaaaaad’’).
To prevent tensions rising so high your 2WD combusts on SH8 somewhere between Twizel and Wanaka, here are some options to keep the peace for more than 15 minutes.
NPR Music’s Best 100 Songs Of 2018: NPR Music’s annual best-of playlist is a Hits For Kids album for a palette craving a little more diversity. The seven-hour playlist will get you from Auckland to Taupo with plenty of time to spare, and covers everything from Top 40 pop to country and jazz. If someone doesn’t like one song, they’ll probably like the next one. Heck, you might even land on one you all like. The playlist can be easily searched for on Spotify.
2019 Grammy Award game: This is an opportunity to make a game out of an upcoming event. Listen to every song nominated in a particular category (avoid ‘‘best album’’ categories for the sanity of all involved), then make a call on who’s going to take out said category. Like Cluedo (‘‘Silk City and Dua Lipa win Best Dance Recording for Electricity’’), only you won’t know who wins until February 11 when the ceremony is held. The beauty of this means you can come back to the game throughout your January holiday. There’s no great urgency to
get it done that afternoon. For obvious safety reasons, the passenger will need to queue the tracks while someone in the back seat notes down everyone’s choices, sliding them into a dramatic gold envelope at the game’s close.
Mariah Carey black hole: All I Want For Christmas, on repeat, forever. Make that song last longer than your Christmas ham, I dare you.
Podcasts: It is way easier to listen to a podcast you aren’t that jazzed about than music you aren’t that jazzed about. If you really want to win the kids over pick something with a bit of edge.
If you want to raise realists, subject them to bleak but wonderful New York Times joint The Daily ,if you want some 60 Minutes-style human interest pieces, chip away at the This American Life archive, and
if you want to create some tiny thought leaders, Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations and TED Talks are universal crowd pleasers.
Whatever you do, avoid true crime. No-one wants to hear about a murder in the middle of nowhere, when you’re about to go bush for the week.
The Classics: When I say play The Classics, this isn’t me giving Dad permission to blast four U2 CDs in a row (that’s how this problem arose in the first place, remember).
This trophy cabinet of bangers is exclusively made up of truly groundbreaking albums you no longer listen to on a regular basis.
Whitney Houston’s 1985 debut Whitney, Joni Mitchell’s painfully vulnerable Blue, Marvin Gaye’s 1971 classic What’s Going On?, and the sophomore record that cemented Lady Gaga as pop icon, The Fame Monster.
If your companions can’t appreciate really good music, regardless of genre, drop them off at the next bus stop.
Disney everything: If the kids won’t quit with the Disney requests, the soundtrack for Mary Poppins Returns will be your friend.
The fairly traditional soundtrack is the closest thing Disney has to active meditation.
Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Meryl Streep and an assortment of young cast members make for a soothing, (very) low BPM listen.
There are no Frozen or The Lego Movie-esque catchy hooks.
Everything is twinkly, the stringheavy arrangements are extremely calming, and everything is G-rated.
They’re show tunes, not pop songs.
If you can’t stand spoken word, forget I said anything.