Writing inspired by the following SWC prompts:

Write about something that’s gotten better with age.

Dad Music

by Keith Gray

I believe my taste in music has gotten better with age. My daughter would disagree. I enjoy songs with meaning. Songs with inspirational and emotive lyrics crafted by hard-won wisdom and layered over resonating guitar riffs. Songs that make me feel. My daughter wants to dance.

In my favourite songs, I patiently try to explain to her, the words are poetry and the music is powerfully felt. They are songs expertly crafted and performed by musicians who care soul-deep about every note they play. She just wants to dance.

I sit her down and gently but firmly clamp my oh-so expensive headphones over her young ears. I ask her to close her eyes and feel transported by the song called ‘Grendel’. It’s a re-telling, in musical form, of the Ancient English myth of Beowulf. But, this song – get this – this song tells it from the monster’s point of view! With guitar solos. How cool is that? And the song lasts 17 minutes and 18 seconds because no way can that amount of songwriting awesomeness and storytelling prowess be contained in a simple pop song.

But she cannot sit still to listen all the way to the end because all she wants to do is dance.

She plays me one of her songs as she gyrates around me. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus. It’s all so predictable, I tell her. The rising key-change so clichéd. The lyrics obvious, coarse, banal. And it’s all been done a million times before. ‘Don’t you want your music to surprise you?’ I ask. No, because the predictable beats are what keep her dancing.

You can’t say I haven’t tried. But she’s stubborn. And when she’s out with her gang of friends – and they’re all whooping and swaying and bouncing and singing at the tops of their voices and dancing themselves into a giggling sweaty mess – then I’ll sit in my darkened room with my oh-so expensive headphones cocooning me from the outside world, eyes closed, all alone, and I’ll try to think of another way to prove to her that my music is better.