Learner Dad: It’s pounding guitar riffs on our playlists for the foreseeable

I’m just waiting for my daughter to ask me what the line ‘we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed’ means

My daughter is a heavy metal fan. Picture: iStock 

My daughter loves heavy metal.

It’s one of these things that dawned on me slowly. The first time I saw it was on holidays when the kids were allowed to choose what we’d listen to on Spotify, in return for being dragged away from the pool on a road trip.

The downside of letting your kids choose the music in the car is that you get to listen to a lot of songs about Harry Potter and Minecraft. But it beats the whingeing when you choose a song that you like, and no one wants to hear they’re lame for liking Pulp or Paul Simon.

Anyway, this summer, my daughter only wanted to listen to AC/DC’s Highway to Hell , which is where I found myself, every time she asked us to put it on.

It's hilariously bad.

When I was in my early teens, it was hard to avoid AC/DC. Half my class thought they were class, and the other half kept away from them. I was in the second half. I didn’t get heavy metal or head-banging.

And now my daughter is getting sucked in. I think Meatloaf was a kind of gateway to metal for her. She knows all the words to Paradise by the Dashboard Light —  I’m just waiting for her to ask me what the line ‘we were barely 17 and we were barely dressed’ means.

Her metal madness went up a notch the other day when I was driving her to summer camp. She sits up front with me now, we’re slowly becoming equals, I love it. And then she put on a metal song by Five Finger Death Punch. No, I’d never heard of them either.

The opening lines of Not My Kind —  ‘Let's take a walk down memory lane, when I was just a boy and I wasn’t insane’ — weren’t very promising. Things didn’t improve.

Five Finger Death Punch make s AC/DC sound like the Nolan Sisters. It’s a darker sound, without any hint of irony or pantomime about it. I asked my daughter how she found this song.

That’s when she told me. She’s liked heavy metal for a few years, ever since she saw it on  Teen Titans Go. (Very funny show, I’d recommend you take a look.)

Anyway, she came across Not My Kind when she searched for 'clean heavy metal' on Spotify.

A couple of things here.

First of all, Spotify might want to take a look at its search engine if it delivers Five Finger Death Punch when asked for 'clean heavy metal'. There’s no cursing, but that’s hardly the point. (In fairness, there is a kids' version of Spotify, but it has none of the music my children like, so we let them on the adult version of the app.)

The other thing that came to mind is that my child went looking for 'clean heavy metal' because she didn’t want to be bold. That won’t last forever.

She also listens to the clean version of the ABCDEFU song, unless we tell her she can listen to the original one, with the F word.

I don’t know if you’ve heard ABCDEFU, but it’s the best break-up song I’ve ever heard. It couldn’t be much further from heavy metal, but my daughter is at the super-cool age where she just likes what she likes.

That will probably change soon when what she likes will be part of her identity. And to be honest, she has a heavy metal soul. Looking back on it now, a lot of the people I knew who liked metal growing up were sound, smart types who liked to let the rage out by shaking their heads. There are worse ways to let off some steam.

So it’s going to be pounding guitar riffs and angry singers on our playlists for the foreseeable. I’m OK with that — most of those angry singers are just putting it on. And it’s fascinating watching my 10-year-old girl find her way to the music she likes. It’s going to make for fun driving, particularly if we can get her brother to stop asking for sea shanties. But that’s a story for another day.