Tuesday, 8:14 AM. I'm sitting in the school drop-off line wearing black leggings that haven't actually seen a yoga studio since approximately 2019. There's a crusty white stain on my left knee that I'm aggressively ignoring—it's either toothpaste or yogurt, and honestly, I don't have the emotional bandwidth to find out which.
My four-year-old, Leo, is kicking the back of my driver's seat in a slow, methodical rhythm that's slowly eroding my sanity. My seven-year-old, Maya, is in the third row loudly narrating a story about a girl at school who apparently "breathes too loud." The ambient noise level in this vehicle is reaching a pitch that only dogs and stressed-out millennial mothers can hear.
I need a distraction. I need peace. I need, like, an entirely new central nervous system, but I'll settle for some music and my lukewarm travel mug of coffee. God, I love coffee. I'm basically 80 percent caffeine and dry shampoo at this point.
Maya yells over Leo's kicking, "Play the Brooklyn song! The one from TikTok!"
I pause, my hand hovering over the steering wheel. Oh right, she means that viral sound going around right now. Very chill. Very acoustic. It's a cover of a Lana Del Rey track that all the Gen-Z kids are obsessed with, and I figure, hey, it has the word "infant" or something in the title? No wait, it's called Brooklyn Baby. Perfect. We love a relaxing vibe. I tap the screen on my dashboard and just tell the voice assistant to play the original version, because I'm a cool mom who knows the classics from 2014.
Big mistake. Huge.
The aesthetic trap of indie pop
Let me back up for a second, because the reason I blindly trusted this song to soothe my feral children is entirely rooted in my own delusion. When Leo was an actual infant, I was completely obsessed with creating this very specific, hyper-curated, urban-hipster aesthetic for him. I didn't want the obnoxious neon plastic toys that scream primary colors at you. I wanted everything neutral, earthy, and cool. Like, I wanted my baby to look like he knew about underground jazz and single-origin espresso.
I was so committed to this vibe that I bought him the Organic Cotton Baby Bodysuit Sleeveless Infant Onesie from Kianao. And honestly? This is one of the few aesthetic choices I made that actually survived contact with reality. I'm not even exaggerating when I say he lived in this thing for a whole summer. The fabric was insanely soft, and it didn't pill in the wash, mostly because it's real organic cotton and doesn't have all that synthetic crap in it. Leo had this weird sensitive skin phase where everything gave him a bumpy red rash, but this onesie never did. Plus, the envelope shoulders meant I could pull it down over his body when he had a blowout, instead of dragging a mustard-yellow disaster up over his head. You only make that mistake once, right?
Anyway, the point is, I was a hipster mom. Or I tried to be. My husband Dave used to laugh at me when I'd spend forty minutes arranging wooden toys to look "effortless."
Like that time I bought the Rainbow Play Gym Wooden Set. It was gorgeous. Seriously, it looked like a piece of modern art sitting in our living room. It had these little wooden rings and this soft, tactile elephant hanging down. It didn't flash strobe lights at me at 6 AM, which was a massive win for my migraines. Leo would just lie under it, quietly batting at the little shapes, and I could actually drink a hot cup of coffee while watching him. It felt like I was winning at parenthood.
Of course, not everything I bought worked out perfectly. I also got him this Bubble Tea Teether because, again, I wanted him to be a tiny trendy city kid. It was cute as hell. But honestly? It was just okay. Leo would chew on the little silicone boba pearls for maybe five minutes, get bored, and immediately throw it under the couch where it would immediately get covered in dog hair. I'd wash it, hand it back, and boom—under the couch again. Kids are fickle little dictators.
Shop Kianao's organic clothing collection to get the urban vibe without the toxic materials.
When the algorithm betrays you
So, cut back to the minivan. Tuesday morning. The song starts playing.
It's got this moody, atmospheric guitar intro. I take a sip of my coffee. I'm relaxing. My shoulders drop down from my earlobes for the first time in 48 hours. Leo really stops kicking my seat for a second because the music is so spacey and weird.
And then I genuinely start listening to the lyrics of Brooklyn Baby.
At first, it's just stuff about having a rare jazz collection and feathers in her hair. Totally fine. I'm vibing. Dave always says my music taste is stuck in the 2010s, and he's right, but whatever. Then she hits the verse.
Wait. Did she just say something about hydroponic weed?
I freeze, the coffee mug halfway to my mouth.
Did she just mention amphetamines?
OH GOD. I suddenly remember what this song is honestly about. It's not a lullaby. It's a satirical, highly adult, psychedelic rock anthem mocking the hipster subculture of New York a decade ago. The title might literally have the word baby in it, but this is profoundly, aggressively NOT for children.
And here I'm, blasting it through the premium surround sound of a Honda Odyssey.
The doctor was right about the sponge brains
My brain immediately spirals into panic mode, because I remember a conversation I had with our doctor, Dr. Evans, at Leo's four-year well-visit.
We were talking about screen time and media, and she mumbled something about how kids this age are absolute neurological sponges for profanity and adult concepts. Apparently, their little brains are aggressively mapping out sound patterns, and if they hear a swear word or something wild, they just lock it right into their vocabulary. I don't totally understand the actual science behind it—something about the frontal lobe not having an executive filter yet? Or maybe their synapses are just greedy?
I'm not a neurologist, okay? I'm just a mom who barely remembers to move the laundry to the dryer. But the point I took away from Dr. Evans was that kids internalize exactly what you play for them, and they don't have the context to know that Lana Del Rey is doing a bit.
If you play them a song glorifying adult themes, their brain just files it away as "normal things we talk about." And right at that exact second, the bridge of the song hits, and Lana drops a very clear, completely uncensored F-bomb.
"Because I don't have to f***ing explain it."
Loudly. Crisply. Reverb and all.
The great dashboard scramble
My reflexes, which are normally dulled by sleep deprivation, suddenly kick into hyperdrive. I lunge for the dashboard screen like I'm trying to defuse a bomb.
I miss the pause button and accidentally turn the volume UP. The expletive echoes through the car. Maya stops talking about the loud breather at school and goes completely silent. Leo says, "Mommy, what did the lady say?"
I slap my hand flat against the screen, hitting something that finally kills the audio. The silence in the minivan is deafening. My coffee mug, which I had abandoned in my frantic flailing, tips over in the cupholder, spilling brown liquid all over my center console and splattering onto my already questionable leggings.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Here are a few things I learned in those agonizing ten seconds of my life:
- Titles are deceptive. Just because a track has the word "baby" in it doesn't mean it belongs on a nursery playlist. Don't trust the pop charts.
- TikTok is a liar. The fifteen-second acoustic covers trending on social media strip away all the adult context of the original songs.
- My kids are always listening. They might ignore me when I ask them to put their shoes on for twenty minutes, but they'll hear a bad word through a car stereo with pinpoint, terrifying accuracy.
- I need to check the "E" tag. Spotify literally puts an Explicit warning right there on the screen, and I completely ignored it because I was too busy being annoyed by Leo's socks.
Dave thought the whole thing was hilarious when I told him later that night. He was like, "So, what, is Leo going to preschool tomorrow talking about Lou Reed?" Dave thinks I overreact to everything. I mean, I probably do, but I'm the one who had to spend the rest of the car ride explaining to my four-year-old that the singer in the car was "using words we don't use" while furiously scrubbing coffee out of my cupholder with a dried-out baby wipe.
I just wanted to have a cool, chill morning. I wanted to feel like that indie mom I tried so hard to be when Leo was wearing his little organic Kianao onesies. Instead, I'm just a chaotic mess in a minivan, trying to keep my kids from absorbing the worst parts of pop culture before 9 AM.
Next time Maya asks for a song from TikTok, we're listening to the Moana soundtrack. End of discussion. I'm not risking it.
Messy questions I've been asked about baby lyrics and music
Is it genuinely bad to play explicit music around babies?
Honestly? My doctor made me feel like I was melting my kid's brain, but I think it's mostly about them mimicking the sounds when they get to the toddler stage. An infant isn't going to understand the words, obviously. But once they hit like, two or three? They repeat EVERYTHING. I wouldn't risk it unless you want a call from daycare because your kid dropped an F-bomb during circle time.
How do I stop my older kids from requesting inappropriate songs?
If you figure this out, please email me. Maya hears stuff on TikTok from her older cousins and just demands it. I try to make a pre-approved playlist for the car, but sometimes I get tired of fighting and just let the algorithm take the wheel. Which, as we learned today, is a terrible idea. Just stick to the Disney soundtracks, it's safer for your blood pressure.
Are there any cool songs that honestly have baby lyrics that are safe?
Yeah! A lot of artists honestly make really cool lullaby versions of their songs. Look up "Rockabye Baby!" on Spotify—they do instrumental covers of like, Snoop Dogg and Nirvana. It gives you that cool hipster vibe without the stress of suddenly hearing a drug reference while you're trying to merge onto the highway.
Why do artists put the word baby in titles of adult songs anyway?
Because the music industry hates parents, probably. No, it's just a term of endearment in pop music, but it makes searching for actual children's music a total nightmare. I once accidentally played "Baby Got Back" at a first birthday party trying to be the fun DJ. It's a minefield out there, guys. Just read the lyrics first. Learn from my minivan mistakes.
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