song for kids, nostalgia, US

goldmund

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Hi!

Could any of you Yankees point me to popular songs for kids that would make you all nostalgic, remind you of the mysteries of childhood? Something that is still sometimes recorded, with children voices, catchy, with a somewhat unclear and maybe even uncomfortably eerie at points? :)

There's a Polish song about blackberries ("our black hearts are happy...") that I need to replace with American one in my script.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2sxx95jRuA

Thanks in advance!
 

Wicked

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Hmm. I don't know. Maybe 'Puff the Magic Dragon'?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wik2uc69WbU

It's probably more sad than eerie, though.


And I don't know how popular this is, but the movie 'Hocus Pocus" had a lullaby the witches used to lure children, called 'Come Little Children'. There are references that it was supposedly a Edgar Allan Poe poem, but it isn't looking that way. (because the internet has more misinformation than a rat has fleas) Film composer John Debney is given credit for it. Which means the song is probably only twenty years old.
Maybe not what you are looking for, but definitely eerie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t8-_pI1-9Q&feature=related
 
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buz

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"Ring Around the Rosie" is probably the classic kinda-creepy children's song--although I guess it's more of a "rhyme" than a song. There's a probably-untrue story out there about how the song is about people dying from the plague, which folklorists reject, but it can still be interpreted as kinda creepy...:)

There are also a few nursery rhyme type songs that are kind of gruesome. "It's raining, it's pouring, the old man is snoring! He went to bed and bumped his head and he didn't get up in the morning!" for example.

But those are more rhymes than full songs...hm. Songs. Most songs from my childhood were either a) Raffi or b) Disney, and those aren't really creepy...

There is "Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts" but that's more of a grossout than creepy. :D
 
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Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

Most of these are folksongs sung by adults, but also sung by children:

"I Am a Poor Wayfaring Stranger"
"The Erie Canal"
"On Top of Old Smoky"
"Sweet Betsy from Pike"
"Clementine"
"Down in the Valley"
and the spiritual
"Nobody Knows the Trouble I See"

There's also the nonsense song "My Boy Billy," which is a parody of "Lord Randall."

Hope this list helps.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

goldmund

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Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Before I check them all out: rhymes are OK, too; and I'm not really looking for "scary" things, the eeriness is a bonus :) Generally I'm looking for a song/rhyme (not a lullaby, need some upbeat tempo for film's opening) that makes you go: oh dear, I was a child once... so innocent... of the tears and fears of adult life... ;-)
 

CWatts

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Big Rock Candy Mountain could work - they taught us a cleaned-up version in school (this was in the 80s) but the original from Depression-era hobos has stuff like cigarette trees, lakes of whiskey and gin and cops with wooden legs (oddly enough they kept that last one in the kid version). The child-inappropriate stuff could be eerie if you've got kids singing it....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rock_Candy_Mountain
 

Siri Kirpal

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Thanks a lot for the suggestions!

Before I check them all out: rhymes are OK, too; and I'm not really looking for "scary" things, the eeriness is a bonus :) Generally I'm looking for a song/rhyme (not a lullaby, need some upbeat tempo for film's opening) that makes you go: oh dear, I was a child once... so innocent... of the tears and fears of adult life... ;-)

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

In that case, I'd go with "Ring Around a Rosie" or "The Big Rock Candy Mountain."

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

absitinvidia

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The Hokey Pokey, The Lion Sleeps Tonight, The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly
 

ClareGreen

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A lot of nursery rhymes are really quite creepy if you stop to think about them - and anything can be made bouncy if you speed up the tempo a little.

Rock a bye baby, on the tree top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come cradle, baby and all.
 

WriteKnight

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Rock A Bye Baby - definitely.

Ring A'Round the Rosy - definitely

Both of those can be sung in a minor key, or off-key, very creepy. Both of violent connotations.

And just as a coincidence, my latest script - a very very dark, twisted, noir piece. Ends with a child singing "The Alphabet Song" - which here in America, is sung to "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" - which of course, Motzart did such a wonderful variation on. Because of how it is set up in the film, the child singing it is going to be very, very creepy.
 

flapperphilosopher

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I don't know if it would fit your criteria, but "The Ants go Marching" both reminds me of being a kid and kind of creeps me out... it's a silly song but to a tune that comes from a war song and is very often used as accompanying music for "off to war" kind of scenes (at least in older things). Apparently the original song is called "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," from the Civil War.

The ant lyrics go like this:

The ants go marching one by one hurrah, hurrah,
The ants go marching one by one, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching one by one, the little one stops to suck his thumb
And they all go marching down to the ground to get out of the rain.

The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah
The ants go marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah,
The ants go marching two by two, the little ones stops to tie his shoe
And they all go marching down to the ground to get out of the rain.

etc., with the little one stopping to whatever rhymes with the number (I think you were allowed to make these up, too).

Here's a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZInmx5Z_j0

Here it is as a military tune: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3k8H_9SjoM

The contrast between the two really creeps me out.

(actually the original song creeps me out too... cheerful war songs always do, I can't help but imagine them as bitterly ironic)
 
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Goldbirch

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"All the Pretty Little Ponies" came to mind for me on the eerie front, especially if it includes the verse about birds and butterflies pecking out the baby's eyes.

Other bedtime songs from my childhood:
"I Gave My Love a Cherry" (especially the version with "I gave my love a baby with no crying" - I always wondered whether that baby was dead or not)
"The Water is Wide"
"Down in the Valley"
"My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean" (when I was very small, thought this was bunny and imagined a pet rabbit on the wrong side of an ocean)
"I've Been Working on the Railroad"
"What Can You Do with a Drunken Sailor"

Also, look up Peter, Paul and Mary's "It's raining, it's pouring". Has a medley of several nostalgic childhood rhymes mushed together. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded a lot of other songs I could list here, too - very nostalgic music for me.

Friend's mother used to sing "Long Black Veil" as a lullaby.
 

Siri Kirpal

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"All the Pretty Little Ponies" came to mind for me on the eerie front, especially if it includes the verse about birds and butterflies pecking out the baby's eyes.

Other bedtime songs from my childhood:
"I Gave My Love a Cherry" (especially the version with "I gave my love a baby with no crying" - I always wondered whether that baby was dead or not)
"The Water is Wide"
"Down in the Valley"
"My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean" (when I was very small, thought this was bunny and imagined a pet rabbit on the wrong side of an ocean)
"I've Been Working on the Railroad"
"What Can You Do with a Drunken Sailor"

Also, look up Peter, Paul and Mary's "It's raining, it's pouring". Has a medley of several nostalgic childhood rhymes mushed together. Peter, Paul and Mary recorded a lot of other songs I could list here, too - very nostalgic music for me.

Friend's mother used to sing "Long Black Veil" as a lullaby.

Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

In the original version of "I Gave My Love a Cherry," the line about the baby is "A baby that's a-gettin' has no cryin'." So it's not a song I'd use for this.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

frimble3

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How about 'The More We Get Together'? It's a traditional camp-fire song with very simple lyrics, basically: 'The more we get together the happier we'll be, because your friends are my friends and my friends are your friends'.
There are various recording of it, (including Raffi) so most Americans would recognise it, and you can sing it bright and bouncy, or slow and eerie.
Tell me, people who know it: would that song sung slowly, in child's voice, over an image of a lone child in a deserted playground, not make you feel shivery?
Same song, chorus of children's voices, sung brightly over a scene of a playground full of children, entirely different effect.
 

cornflake

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Not for nuttin, but what the heck is Big Rock Candy Mountain?

I'd say caroles fit your criteria best, really, especially as to recorded and still recorded.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

The Big Rock Candy Mountain was a popular song in the 1930s. With lots of food imagery.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Debbie V

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Sing a Song of Sixpence.

The birds are baked into a pie but when the pie is opened the birds begin to sing. Go for the whole thing - the blackbirds get revenge on the maid.

Any of the rhymes can be put to tunes.
 

Debbie V

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There's a French song Sur le Pont de Avignon (forgive any French errors, it's been a while)- it's about a shipwreck, I believe. We have that on a kid's CD in English and French. It's very catchy.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Sat Nam! (literally "Truth Name"--a Sikh greeting)

There's also the French song "Frere Jacques" (my spelling is probably off). Most kids in America sing it. Normally a cheery song, but Mahler set it in minor key in his first symphony and voila! a funeral dirge.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

I_love_coffee

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how about "the wheels on the bus"

this will remind anyone of childhood, but its not eerie, but if you take it and make it eerie, well, people might hear it in a new way.

the wheels on the bus go round and round
round and round round and round

the wheels on the bus go round and round
round and round round and round etc...

you can keep going, like the wipers on the bus, or the babies on the bus or the driver on the bus.... kids sit there and do the han motions with their hands going round and round. its very preschool and very repetitive