New Song in Town

Since they were babies, Pat and I have sung songs to Jack and Casey after their stories, right before bedtime.  From classic bedtime songs like "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" to patriotic songs like "God Bless America" to sporty songs like "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and the "Eagles Fight Song", we had a pretty decent repertoire.  I've sung almost every single children's song I know plus a few that I learned along the way.  At one point, I was singing about six songs every night to Jack.  Then he started asking for new songs and I started making them up.  It's not so easy to make up a new song every night.

About six months ago, I let the kids watch the Wiggles sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" on my phone.  Every once in a while, if I had my phone upstairs I'd let them watch a few songs.  They liked it and I liked that I didn't have to sing Twinkle Twinkle anymore.

With the Star Wars craze that currently has this house in its grips, the kids wanted me to sing a Star Wars song.  Humming the Darth Vader theme song wasn't quite enough.  So I converted "This Old Man" to suit my needs.  The kids call it "This Old Man Star Wars."

It goes a little like this...
"This old man, he played one, he played knick knack on my [insert the name of a Star Wars character here].  With a knick knack paddy whack...."

It no longer rhymes any more and it makes no sense, but the kids love shouting out different characters for me to use on each number.  (Leia is always 2.)

But even "This Old Man Star Wars" got old.  One night I pulled out the iPad, opened up YouTube and searched for Star Wars songs.  We found a few versions of Star Wars theme music with different Star Wars images.  But a few nights later, we found our new favorite song.  It's sung a cappella, with Star Wars related lyrics, but to the tune of several other movie themes written by John Williams like Jurassic Park, Jaws and Indiana Jones.



(Now that I spent half an hour trying to find this exact version, I'm not sure how we stumbled across it in the first place.  It would help if the person who posted it had spelled "cappella" correctly.  There are a few other versions out there but this is our favorite.)

It is sung by an a cappella group named Moosebutter.  With a little more YouTube searching, we found a video that shows one guy who made it look like he sung all the parts.  The screen is split into four parts and he sings/lip syncs all four parts.

Jack loves it.  He has the words memorized.  I find myself humming random parts of it during the day.  Casey sings along too.  (Pat is still warming up to it.)  Jack even knows which version of the singer (he has different T-shirts on) is singing which part.

And so, bedtime songs have been modernized a little around here.  2011 - the year of bedtime songs on the iPad through YouTube.