Baby Songs

[mr3urious]

Anyone remember this old video series? They were aimed at preschoolers with music written & sung by Hap Palmer, essentially a competitor to Raffi back in the '80s-mid '90s.

Nowadays most of these are babyish and a bit awkward for me to enjoy unironically. This especially goes for songs like "Piggy Toes" after knowing about foot fetishism.

I find the slightly older kids' spin-off video Turn On the Music to be more genuinely enjoyable. In particular, there's the (slightly creepy) "Amanda Schlupp", about a girl who keeps a messy room and dreams that all her toys run away from her. The parts that describe her mess in detail and show her sad-faced mirror & hairbrush along with her broken pony shedding a tear are a lot more tearjerking than I remembered. And I recall being a little creeped out by the crude stop-motion movements of the toys coming to life.

And "Francie Had a Football" (last vid in this part) was pretty progressive with its message about going against gender norms. I love how it's only the coach who has a problem with Francie trying to join the team.

 

[Schfifty]

I do remember Baby Songs, and quite fondly. I had the original video plus More Baby Songs when I was little, then I later got Turn On the Music when I was older. I think I liked Turn On the Music the most, maybe because I got it when I was 9 or 10, and it wasn't like one of those "for really little kids" kind of videos like Barney or Baby Einsteins. It had some pretty enjoyable songs and generally featured older children than toddlers and babies, so I guess that appealed to me. Lots of the songs are even enjoyable at an adult age.

I kind of wonder where "Shout and Whisper" on the original video came from. It's the only song not sung by Hap, but by a bunch of children instead. The video also features older kids - more like 6—8-year-olds - than in most of the other videos, which have much younger children.

Nowadays most of these are babyish and a bit awkward for me to enjoy unironically. This especially goes for songs like "Piggy Toes" after knowing about foot fetishism.

I kind of disagree. Several songs are pretty catchy (like "Piggy Toes" and "Rolling" from the original) and also funny ("Hurry Up Blues" and "Backwards Land" from TotM). Some of them I would probably say are baby-ish, but I wouldn't say all of them are.

 

[Schfifty]

There's an observation I had about the ending instrumental theme: doesn't it kind of sound like music in Mario Party? It sounds very well like it could be a piece for a stage in a Mario Party game.

 

[mr3urious]

I wonder if these sentient fruits have ever met the California Raisins?