¤ milky moon ¤

What music did your parents listen to growing up? What were you exposed to as a child? It doesn't have to be what you liked, just what you heard growing up.

Ooooh! When I was young, my mother and aunt listened to Sublime, Nirvana, Mr. Bungle (one of my favourite bands now), CAKE, Sinead O'Connor, the Pretenders, Peter Murphy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc. My aunt was a total art school hipster, and still sort of is. She has a huge record collections, with everything from Chopin to Culture Club to GWAR. My papa and I used to listen to Delbert McClinton.

Now, my mother and father both love CAKE, (who doesn't?), Jack Johnson, ManMan, Carla Bruni, and Indigo Girls.

When I was young my mum played piano a lot, but it was usually soundtracks to films or musicals, so I grew up hearing a lot of her playing songs from The Lion King, West Side Story (in particular the song 'Maria', which I used to dance up and down the living room to, and I called it The Thumper Song because it reminded me of Thumper from Bambi) and also random pop songs like 'Unbreak my heart' by Toni Braxton.

My parents are also big fans of Burt Bacharach, so I heard a lot of the album he did with Elvis Costello (my favourite is the song 'Tears at the Birthday Party', which apparently I used to sing a lot as a child, although I barely remember that), and also they loved Randy Newman and jazz music. They are both obsessed with Gershwin, and I started listening to Gershwin when I was around 9 years old and our house is basically full of Gershwin sheet music and various compilation CDs.

Aside from all of this, my mum is bizarrely a massive fan of hip hop and rap music, so I guess I heard quite a bit of that growing up (before I wanted to become a singer-songwriter, I was originally set on becoming a famous female rapper). Overall I think that I'm really lucky to belong to such a musical family, because I've ended up being exposed to a real variety of music.

My mum used to listen to this a lot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1M5eEJeT38
Me and my sister used to sing along and dance around to it.

And my dad used to listen to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZ6zVW3V1hc

But my dad had a way of sining it that used to make us laugh as he made it sound really, really miserable

My mom watched a lot of MTV back when they had music videos, so I had a healthy diet of Paula Abdul, Madonna, Michael Jackson, George Michael, Peter Gabriel... basically your popular 80s musicians. Both my parents listened to Bob Marley a lot, and my dad listened to this Swiss world/new age/jazz harpist-slash-multi-instrumentalist named Andreas Vollenweider. There was also a lot of Basia, Sade, and Pink Floyd going around. And Sting!

Mom: Beatles, oldies radio, classical, ragtime

Dad: Yes, U2, Tears for Fears, Squeeze... lots more I can't remember. His tastes have always been diverse in both nature and quality (there was a My Chemical Romance phase a while back that none of his children care to think about).

My mother also really likes Sting. But now, for the most part, she listens to Starbucks music. Ingrid Michaelson, Norah Jones ( I Norah, too.).

My aunt played a huge part in my musical development. She and I listened to Tom Waits and Fugazi and The Pixies and the Cure and stuff like that. We also listened to Bluegrass and Baroque music together. I think she played the biggest part in my current tastes. But my dad loves old school country, like Johnny Cash and Conway Twitty and Kenny Rogers, and no I love Slim Cessna's Auto Club, which is very old school country. When I was about 7, I saw Etta James in concert. That was cool.

When I was in preschool, I made my mom put on the Mary Poppins soundtrack every day when I came home (which explains why I can still say supercalafragilisticexpialidocious backwards).

I like The Carpenters because my mum used to leave them on when she left me in the car to go into the supermarket. Goodbye to Love was the first song I ever cried to! She likes a lot of music. Stevie Wonder, Earth, Wind & Fire. Lately she's in to Michael Buble and that slightly chubby girl with the nice voice and the video with the room full of wine glasses or something.
My dad likes The Pet Shop Boys, I think. He never really listens to music or gets very excited about it. There are a few songs that he likes; mostly he just wants it to be something agreeable to put on in the background. And yet he's managed to milk 63 years of frenzied ecstasy out of watching overpaid morons make a thing go into another thing.

It's one of those ones, yeah.

I used to really love Adele but her music is so overplayed. There's one song on her first album where she does this squeaky thing with her voice and it reminds me of the thing Joanna does with her voice when she sings the word 'And' in Sawdust and Diamonds. I used to try and use this similarity to get my friends to listen to Joanna Newsom (it didn't work).

I give her propes for being full figured, but other than that, I can't stand her either.

All classic rock. My parents were music freaks. Led Zeppelin, Jeff Back, lots of Beatles, Frank Zappa was a favorite, Fleetwood Mac.

My Mom? No idea. She didn't seem to be interested in anything except salvation--for herself, for me, for you, for everyone.

My Dad? He was a DJ at a local radio station, and a singer/musician who was known in a 5-State region around where I lived. I guess his style of music was what might be called country or hillbilly, but he knew and sometimes played with people like Elvis, Marty Robins, Brenda Lee, Chet Atkins, and many others. On his radio show he played just about anything that was popular at the time--country, early rock-n-roll, whatever.

I told you I was old, but you didn't believe me. And, my Dad has been dead for 52 years, and I still miss him.

Very sad Polli