Why The Ronettes’ 1963 Hit Is My Ultimate Parenting Hack

It was 3:14 AM on a Tuesday in November, and Maya was screaming with the kind of primal, glass-shattering intensity that makes your own teeth physically hurt. I was wearing a gray fleece robe that smelled vaguely of sour milk and old coffee, bouncing frantically on a deflated yoga ball in the dark, just totally wondering what the hell I had done with my life. My husband stumbled into the nursery, took one look at my crazed, sleep-deprived eyes, and instead of taking the baby from my aching arms, he pulled out his phone and opened Spotify. Not to a white noise playlist. Not to a gentle acoustic lullaby. He played the 1963 pop anthem "Be My Baby" by The Ronettes.

I was literally opening my mouth to scream at him for bringing upbeat sixties pop into a hostage situation, but then... the drum intro hit. Bum-ba-bum-BOOM. Maya blinked. The castanets kicked in, Ronnie Spector started singing her heart out, and my screeching newborn just... stopped.

By the second chorus, her rigid little body melted into my chest. By the end of the song, she was asleep. I just stared at my husband in the dark, too tired to even be mad that he had solved the crisis with a girl group instead of, like, traditional parenting. Anyway, the point is, I became absolutely obsessed with why this specific track worked like absolute magic on my kid.

What my pediatrician said about the whole wall of sound thing

I dragged my exhausted, highly-caffeinated self to Maya's two-month checkup a few weeks later and casually asked Dr. Aris why playing that specific track was acting like infant anesthesia when the expensive smart bassinet we bought did absolutely nothing. I thought she was going to laugh at me, but she actually got super interested and started explaining it to me.

She said it has everything to do with the heartbeat rhythm. The drums at the beginning of the song apparently mimic a "Latin baion" samba beat, which is a really fancy way of saying it sounds exactly like the deep, muffled, rhythmic thumping a baby hears for nine months in the womb. I guess Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys once said the percussion on that track sounds just like a baby shaking a rattle, which makes so much sense now.

She also talked about the "Wall of Sound" production style, where they layered like a million different instruments—pianos, guitars, horns, castanets—on top of each other in a tiny studio. Dr. Aris said something about how exposing an infant to really complex auditory environments helps build the neural pathways they need for language acquisition later on. I don't entirely understand the neurological science behind how a tambourine helps my kid learn to talk, but I do know that wrapping a fussy infant in a dense blanket of harmonic sound works way better than whatever monotone shushing I was trying to do at three in the morning.

Please don't blast sixties pop music in your nursery

Now, before you go putting a vintage jukebox in your kid's room, we really need to talk about volume. Because I definitely made this mistake early on.

Sixties pop songs were aggressively mixed to sound punchy and loud on crappy AM car radios, so when you play them on a modern speaker, they can be super harsh. Dr. Aris gently reminded me that baby eardrums are basically made of tissue paper and that any continuous nursery audio really shouldn't be louder than 50 decibels. Which is, like, the volume of a quiet conversation or a running dishwasher.

Instead of sticking a speaker right next to her crib and blowing her tiny mind, you really just need to put your phone or Bluetooth speaker out in the hallway or across the room and turn it down slightly more than you think you need to, so the music sort of washes over them gently instead of attacking them.

Why I despise modern electronic baby toys

Let me just go on a tangent for a second because discovering this vintage music hack made me realize how much I absolutely loathe modern baby toys that make noise. You know the ones. The plastic keyboards and the light-up singing turtles that scream aggressively cheerful, off-key songs at your child the second they tap a button. I swear to god, we were gifted a plastic singing dog when Maya was six months old, and it would randomly go off in the toy basket in the middle of the night. I literally wanted to smash it with a hammer.

Those electronic toys are so overstimulating and frantic. They don't have a steady, soothing rhythm. They just beep and flash and make everyone in the house anxious. When Leo came along three years later, I threw all the battery-operated crap in a donation bin and swore we were only doing natural toys and real music in our house. Mozart is fine, I guess, but it honestly just makes me sleepy when I'm already fighting for my life at 4 PM.

Dancing through the teething phase

By the time Leo was born, playing the Ronettes was just part of our daily survival routine. But when he hit four months old, he started teething with a vengeance, and music alone wasn't going to cut it. He was a drooly, frantic mess, shoving his entire fist into his mouth while I tried to sway him in the kitchen.

This is when I discovered the Panda Teether Silicone Baby Bamboo Chew Toy, which is without a doubt my favorite thing we bought for him. Most teethers are either too hard or too thick for a tiny baby to actually hold, but this one is flat and has this brilliant textured surface that he could actually grip. I vividly remember strapping him into the baby carrier, putting on our favorite 1963 playlist, and bouncing around the living room while he ferociously gnawed on the panda's ears. The bamboo detailing is gorgeous, but more importantly, it's 100% food-grade silicone and totally easy to throw in the dishwasher when it gets covered in dog hair. We kept it in the fridge, and the cold rubber combined with the rhythmic bouncing to the music was the only way I survived the entire month of October that year.

We also tried the Gentle Baby Building Block Set around this time. Honestly? They're just okay for the young infant stage. They're super soft and BPA-free, which is great, but Leo mostly just mouthed them for two seconds and then threw them across the room. They genuinely became way more useful when he was like, nine months old and realized he could stack them in the bathtub, so they aren't a total wash, but they didn't have the immediate magic of the panda teether.

(If you're desperately looking for aesthetic, battery-free ways to entertain a baby without losing your mind, you can check out Kianao's wooden sensory play collection right here.)

Tummy time doesn't have to suck

The other thing no one tells you is that you can use upbeat music to bribe your child into doing tummy time. Both of my kids acted like I was torturing them whenever I put them face down on the rug. Just absolute, face-planted misery.

But the driving drum beat of that track honestly gave them something to focus on. I'd lay Leo under his Wooden Baby Gym and let the music play. He'd hear that big "BOOM" and try to lift his heavy little bowling ball of a head to look at the hanging wooden elephant. I love that play gym because it doesn't have any flashing lights or aggressive plastic colors—it just uses gentle, earthy tones and natural wood that looks pretty in my living room while still giving him something to bat at when the chorus kicks in.

It's so funny how parenthood works. You read all these thick, clinical books about infant brain development and buy all this fancy gear, and then one night you're just losing your mind in a spit-up stained robe, and you accidentally stumble onto a piece of pop culture history that really works. So instead of obsessing over getting the perfect white noise frequency and stressing out about sleep training manuals, you might just want to put on some vintage tracks, grab a wooden rattle, and sway around your messy house until your coffee finally kicks in.

Before you dive into the weird world of infant sleep hacks below, take a second to explore Kianao's beautiful, battery-free sustainable play collection to help save your own sanity.

Messy questions about music and babies

Can I just play white noise instead of music?
Oh god, yes, you absolutely can. We definitely still use a basic sound machine at night because I'd lose my mind if I had to listen to a snare drum at 2 AM every single night. But for those fussy, witching-hour moments when they just can't control themselves, complex music works so much better as an immediate distraction. White noise is for sustaining sleep; a good pop beat is for snapping them out of a meltdown.

How do I know if the music is too loud for my baby?
My rule of thumb is that if you can't easily hear your partner whispering from across the room, the music is way too loud for the baby. There are free decibel reader apps you can download on your phone if you're super anxious about it like I was, but basically, keep the speaker far away from their little heads and aim for background-restaurant-level volume.

Will playing sixties music make my baby sleep through the night?
Haha, no. Literally nothing is going to magically make a four-month-old sleep through the night if they're teething or hungry or just going through a developmental leap. The music just helps soothe their nervous system in the moment. It's a tool, not a magic wand, unfortunately.

Do I've to use the Ronettes, or does other music work?
Any song with a really strong, prominent, low-frequency drum beat that mimics a heartbeat will probably do the trick! I've a friend who swears by nineties hip-hop for her colicky baby, and another who uses Fleetwood Mac. It's all about that dense, rhythmic sound that makes them feel like they're back in the womb.