Children’s songs: where have all the traditional ones gone?

If you’re reading this article, you probably also have a toddler or two running around and wreaking havoc. If, like me, you’re wondering where all the traditional nursery rhymes have gone, I’m here to remedy the situation!

Remember traditional nursery rhymes from your kindergarten years like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Old MacDonald Had A Farm, Incy Wincy/Itsy Witsy Spider, ABC, etc.? I assume you remember them sung in a certain way, with different emphasis and emphasis on certain key words. Can’t forget the melodies either – impossible! In fact, many melodies are reused in multiple nursery rhymes, such as Twinkle Twinkle, which has the same tune as A, B, C Song and Baa Baa Black Sheep.

So you can imagine my horror when recently when I was trying to entertain my youngest daughter (15 months) with some YouTube videos and almost None of these children’s songs mentioned above were as I remembered them! Was my bad memory to blame here?

I wanted to show my baby all the nursery rhymes I had grown up with, as well as my own mother/father and theirs too. I was surprised (or should I say “shocked”?) to see how disastrously bad the vast majority of online videos were. I mean they were really horrible! At best, some were genuinely laugh out loud, but for all the wrong reasons (!) And at worst, some were scary and maybe not even suitable for young children. Perhaps the ratio of good:bad quality was around 1:40! I also noticed that most YouTube nursery rhyme videos had unbelievably long intros: 20, 30, or even more seconds of preview material, promos, and other irrelevant material before kicking off with the theme song. You probably don’t need to tell her, dear parent, that even just 20 seconds can seem like an incredibly long time when you have a squirming, slightly bored baby on your lap.

Not only are the websites and animations mostly of incredibly low quality, but the songs and lyrics themselves were often incorrect, as the singer/company’s first language was often not English. where did you have all the real Are nursery rhymes gone? I was wondering. There were very few resources online that reflected my childhood memories. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” had now become “Dwingle Dwingle” and Baa Baa Black Sheep’s little boy now lived in the lane (whatever that means!)

It is important that we do not lose our traditional songs due to the constant technological changes that allow anyone to upload the material they want to the Internet. It is important that high standards are upheld and that we convey our recreational songs accurately. I urge you to watch some of the nursery rhyme videos to see how horrible they have become. You will laugh at some and be embarrassed by others, but after the initial laughter has subsided, you will also feel the sadness of your childhood memories being lost.

Unfortunately, the number of views a video has received or where it appears in search results does not provide any indication of quality. So how do you spot the good stuff and ignore the bad? My recommendations are the following:

1. Go to YouTube (not Google) to search
2. Use the full name of the nursery rhyme, ie “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” is better than “Twinkle Twinkle” and use voice marks around the title.
3. Adding the word “British” or “English” can really help
4. Click search options, and under “Features” (far right), click High Definition.