Colm O'Regan: Children shouldn’t take on our music, they should grow into being pretentious

Lola Young performing at Electric Picnic. Picture: Kieran Frost/Redferns.

The youngest is singing to herself. There is no audience. She’s just playing with her dolls. I start to make out the words she’s singing. “I’m too messy, and then I’m too eff word clean.” (My daughter makes her own radio edits, thank you very much). It’s Lola Young’s song Messy. 

It’s catchy, full of great lyrics railing against some awful man who’s giving out to her for, among other things, being messy, having a bottle of wine or two, not having a job, having a job, being smart, being dumb, crying without a medical reason. It is also about her own roiling brain.

My daughter is singing it with such vehemence that I’m worried. Who HURT you, little one? What boy or girl in 3rd class is being so toxic? She sings the messy bits so loud I wonder if it’s ME. 

Am I shiteing on too much about tidying up, but then she’s tidier than I am. “Is that not ALLOWED?” is another lyric sung with gusto. That’s definitely a dig at me.

But no, it turns out she just likes “the sound of the song”. The fact that “it has cursing in it, but I don’t say them Daddy” and Lola Young’s outfit in the video. Simple as that.

Watching another person develop their musical tastes is item 35 on the list of things that are fun about raising children that doesn’t always make the news.

You can try to imprint on them your own tastes. I provide the angry shouty men templates. The passive aggression of The Wedding Present, the existential hand-wringing of Arcade Fire, the THIS IS PART OF YOUR MUSICAL EDUCATION stuff from the 60s.

My wife provides the power ballads — your Total Eclipse of the Heart, your Don’t Stop Believing, your witchy Kate Bushes, the Florences and their Machines.

But they will just go and re-watch Katseye anyway. Also, I hope they don’t take on our music. You need to grow into being pretentious. Not have it foisted on you.

Katseye provided me with my first musical rite of passage — queuing without enthusiasm for overpriced tickets for a band that, in my heart of hearts, I knew they were going to be shite live. I was 170,00th in the queue. Initially, I blamed myself for not having my settings up to date and updating whatever the TicketGods told me to update, but it turned out that most other people were 170,00th in the queue too. It’s a group parenting experience now. 

Everyone on WhatsApp is sending jaundiced messages about where they are in the queue and consoling on our failure. Meanwhile, those who got tickets are tactful about it. In the same way that you wouldn’t say anything about how much money you earn (unless it’s how much you earn from selling solar back to the grid, along with Vinted stories, the only acceptable time for Irish people to discuss their earnings).

Their live experiences so far have been limited to us taking videos of acts they really wanted to see at Electric Picnic. My wife was ORDERED to get footage of Chappell Roan last year and Zara Larsson this year. I say foot-age, but it was mostly arse-age. You couldn’t avoid it.

I don’t know where they’ll go with their music next. But the other nice thing is that they are teaching me about new bands that the Music World Algorithm won’t bother its hole pushing at me because I am the world’s lowest per capita consumer of merch.

So bits of Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams, Addison Rae, and Olivia Rodrigo (the lyric “the way you sold me for parts” is absolutely my jam) have all seeped into me.

It works differently on me, though. I’ve put Lola Young on and am giving the house a good tidy.