I HIGHLY recommend this album from They Might Be Giants. Adults will like these songs too, which is why I am happy to hear the whole album again, even now. https://www.theymightbegiants.com/new-page
If you’re directing this comment at me, I was directing the comment to the thread title “songs from your vacations” - which felt to me like a specific vacation memory that brought about a specific song memory. And I was saying that I don’t know if I had specific vacation memories of music, except that whenever we traveled in the car, we did listen to certain artists.
Am familiar with They Might Be Giants but they came around after my kids were out of kids music…but would be the right time for “kids” who are now in their early 20’s???
The Laurie Berkner Band, The Wiggles and They Might Be Giants were the ones we listened to in the car the most. Oh, and also a few Kidz Bop CDs that we got as McDonald’s Happy Meals prizes!
When my kids were very little, we listened to the They Might Be Giants “Here Come the ABC’s” CD constantly. I really enjoyed it, too, and my kids still like the songs. Remembering it as teenagers led them to look into some of the band’s older work which they now also enjoy.
We had a “personalized“ VeggieTales CD, which got occasional playing time, but was a bit annoying.
When they were a bit older, we added in Imagination Movers and Backyardigans to the rotation.
But for our really long vacations (we drove over 20 hours to visit family a couple of times a year) we listen to a lot of audiobooks once the kids were four or five and older. I think we listened to all the Magic Treehouse & Wayside School books several times. Also they liked Mrs. Pigglewiggle for some reason, and one copy of a Sherlock Holmes story “The Red Headed League” that we listened to a lot.
There is a great Slate article (from the time when my older one watched the Wiggles) in which a dad decides that instead of fighting the ear worms he would just embrace them and sing them all the time (and be happy instead of miserable about it) until it led to an episode in which IIRC his wife threatened to slap him in the face over Wags the Dog. I remember I laughed out loud (in a public place) when reading.
And yes, thanks to posts above, I’m at work with Hot Potato in my head…
Recess Monkey! Local Seattle band made up of former teachers. Fun and smart lyrics, very sing-along-able. We all knew all the words to every CD and went to a few of their shows at local venues too. Super fun memories.
We had two family songs that we used on all of our trips and bring back fond memories for all of us to this day.
The first was, “On the Road Again.”
The second was the Christian song, “This is My Father’s World.”
All of us knew the lyrics and had a blast singing them, though just at the start of each day of a trip with On the Road Again and mainly when camping or by ourselves at a scenic vista with This is My Father’s World.
During the drives my three boys made up their own game looking out the window at various “resources” and trading them, sort of like Settlers of Catan. I was super impressed with their ability to do that as absolutely none of it was parent inspired. It was fun listening to them though.
We occasionally would play cassettes or CD, often Veggie Tales, Neil Diamond, or Abba - a couple of mixes were in there too.
Our earlier vacations were car trips to campsites because that was all we could afford. So no destination specials. In the car, we listened to whatever mixtapes we had. Then CDs when we upgraded to a car with a fancy CD player. One CD specifically we used to play had songs from The Last Unicorn. And music from The Lion King’was a huge hit, too.
We actually went to two Wiggles concerts haha. Captain Feathersword did a get job of entertaining the adults with humor that went over the kiddies’ heads.
We drove cross-country (literally) on vacation in a minivan with a middle-seat DVD player. For the entire span of the US, I believe the “Grease” movie DVD was played by the kids, perhaps 15-20 times! Not just the songs, but the entire movie.
, but I should go. They Might Be Giants - The Edison Museum - YouTube
