Top 50 Baby Music Albums
Humans are hardwired to love music. It holds a place in us that almost nothing else can reach. As anyone who has seen a grin of delight spread across a listening baby's face knows, there's just something simple and profound about our relationship with sound. And while it's true that the littlest babies don't much care what's playing, as time goes on, they start to listen, move, and sing along (suddenly making half our old music collection off limits for the next 16 years). Luckily we live in a fertile time for kids' music, with rereleases of classic recordings, scores of talented newcomers making charming records, and seemingly every third rocker from the '90s inspired to settle down and create great children's music of their own. Read More ↓
For Babble's first Top 50 Baby Music Albums, we chose recordings that could grow up with babies rather than becoming obsolete as soon as the babies are old enough to crawl away from the stereo. This also meant we stretched the definition of "baby" into the toddler years. Since you may be hearing some of these songs fifty, a hundred, a thousand times, we chose with parental sanity in mind and included a category for the best albums for adults that also work for babies. With music so intimately wrapped up with our emotional lives, we're sure to have made choices you'll disagree with, so feel free to nominate any gems we missed. -Colin Murphy
33 / 50
33
Sweet Dreams: Baby Calming Sounds to Aid Sleep Calmsound
Okay, this is a little like putting a self-help book on a list of the best literature ever, but if you’re the parent of one of those babies who only goes down in the presence of very specific sounds, this may be your all-time number one. It’s definitely cheaper than running the vacuum to induce naptime or spending an extra hour driving around every day.
With ten four- to eight-minute loops of sound, this CD covers all the high points of the white-noise genre, including “Hairdryer,” “Vacuum Cleaner,” and “Car Journey,” along with a selection of more natural sounds from the forest, the ocean, and the womb. That’s it. Sounds. Maybe one of them will work.
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