Don't forget the lyrics!

I love music, but sometimes I'm more drawn to the beat and don't really pay much attention to the lyrics. Well I can't say the same for Bilaal! One morning on the way to school, the highveld breakfast team were talking about the rumours that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie broke up. Bilaal was asking me how people can 'break up'. So I found myself explaining the complexities of adult relationships to my 5 year old!

So anyway the other day the Rhianna and Neyo song was on in the car and the lyrics goes, "I hate that I love you so..." So of course curious Bilaal asked his dad "why does she say that she hate that she love him?" So Yaasier tried to explain to him that sometimes when adults don't get along anymore they may decide not to live together anymore and so they don't want to love each other because it makes them sad to be apart. To which Bilaal replied, "Oh so you mean like they break up?" Previous conversation unbeknown to Yaasier, he was so taken aback he asked Bilaal "what do you know about breaking up?"

Of course this was not the only time Bilaal was confused about the lyrics of a song. There's that 'sweet dream' song by Beyonce, where Bilaal wanted to know "how can you have a beautiful nightmare?" He actually found the whole concept very disturbing.

But one song we try to avoid in his presence is 'Bed' by ... well I don't know the artists name, but basically it's an R'nB song about taking the woman to bed and well yeah...The lyrics aren't lewd or anything, he was about 3 when he first heard the song, and would sing it out loud when it came on the radio. And he would ask all kinds of questions about why the man wanted to take the lady to bed, etc. Of course we covered by saying she was tired and he wanted he to go to sleep!

Then there's that song by Sean Kingston.. Beautiful Girls where he sings, "they drive me suicidal..." that used to play the airwaves all the time when it was first released. Way too heavy a subject to engage with a 3 year old!.

Now the worst is actually not due to lyrics of a song, but rather a BBC Entertainment channel trailer for one of their sitcoms. It's clearly not a sitcom for kiddies, yet they use the worst one-liners in their trailers and then air it in the middle of the day! For example one character says to the other something about paying for sex! And of course curious Bilaal asked, what's paying for sex? Whenever that word falls upon his ears we always convince him that he actually heard the word 'six' not 'sex'! So clearly the man was paying for six of something right? I'm just not ready for the whole birds and bees discussion just yet! But the most classic was when he cottoned onto the word 'Fock!' We expertly brainwashed him into substituting the word for the word 'Fox' and he never asked what it meant again, cos as far as he's concerned its that brown pointy eared animal that used to cry outside our window when we lived in London.

There are so many more examples, but I just can't remember all of them now, will update when I do :D