A full two months later: a followup to what was meant to be a mini-series on music, parenting, and love. I set myself up to traverse a canyon and then got stuck on one side for weeks designing the bridge. What was intended to be a three-act structure evolved into two uneven halves. Along the way, I (re)learned an invaluable lesson on setting myself up for success—and/or failure! And now I’m excusing my delay with a few clumsy, half-baked visuals that serve as lazy metaphors for what parenting often feels like.
The only way through is through—and the only way I’m going to write anything else for you/me/anyone is if I finish what I started this summer. Here we go.
ICYMI: Part 1 • ✨ "I can buy myself flowers"
"I wanna learn a love song"
On the road again, the last big drive of the summer, chauffering my kid back to Brooklyn after a month upstate in the woods. I checked the rearview mirror. Believing she was soundly knocked out, I dared to turn off her podcast. This dad can only take so much Count Vacula.1 I craved some guitar picking and more mature storylines. A road trip singalong. For one. A familiar voice popped into my head and broke through the road noise, "I wanna learn a love song full of happy things."
The line made me smile. After years of adjusting my baseline to a more melancholic version of myself, this summer, I unexpectedly fell in love. Then found myself even more surprised that I regularly felt happy and—as Harry kicks off in the live recording—”more than a little bit horny.” Turn it up.
Now, when you listen, and I really hope you do—spoiler!—it is decidedly not a carefree, happy song. The song is a meditation on falling in love later in life: after your heart has been broken, after you played the field, after you are already a parent, after (or before?) the divorce… and while you think you are doing something else entirely. It was written as an autobiographical ode to Harry falling in love with his wife while teaching her children music lessons. Love is complicated, kids!
It had been some time since I listened to Harry’s Greatest Stories – Live, but the album always feels like a reunion. Like stopping by the one diner in that small town you lived in for a time. All the characters are there; all the stories are nuanced and nostalgic. Subsequently, all the feels. Listening to “I Wanna Learn a Love Song” over and over while my daughter slept, I heard the story’s complexity from a new perspective: that of a parent. I was only a few years older than my daughter is now when I transferred this album from my mother’s CD to a black cassette so I could listen on repeat in my bedroom. What exactly was I listening for then? What stories about love was I absorbing?
If you know any Harry Chapin at all, it might be his one big hit, “Cat's in the Cradle.” (Or, depending on your age, maybe that metallic Ugly Kid Joe 1992 cover.) Take that reflective, growing up is emotionally fraught, relationships can be traumatic, dreams sometimes don’t come true vibe—add a dash of a global humanitarian crisis—and spread liberally over 14 tracks. That’s Harry Chapin’s live album. And I was obsessed. Still am.
I lost track of time while singing along to my favorite songs and debating with myself whether any of this had been age-appropriate when I first listened. Traffic slowed enough to snap me out of my head; I looked up in the rearview and saw my daughter’s eyes open, quietly gazing at the scenery rolling by and listening intently. What was she hearing in Harry’s words?
I have so many fond memories of sharing music with my parents.
I frequently make light of my not-yet-out dad playing the Les Misérables double cassette album in our family’s blue Taurus, juxtaposed to the later liberated-and-openly-gay dad blasting erasure's Cowboy in his Sebring convertible. Those musical references make for narrative shorthand and serve as convenient details to set up my own second-generation queer coming-of-age. But my father is also why I know every word and every groan of Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell. He’s why 30 years ago—September 14, 1993—as a baby freshman, I left school at the bell and biked to the indie record shop to buy Bat Out of Hell II on release day.
It maybe doesn't make sense—the Meat Loaf of it all—unless you know that songwriter Jim Steinman originally conceived of Bat Out of Hell as a present-day musical theater adaptation of Peter Pan. The album's unexpected success led to Steinman writing Bonnie Tyler's “Total Eclipse of the Heart” (and producing her entire underappreciated album Faster Than the Speed of Night). Jim Steinman wrote so many belty, impassioned bangers. (Making Love out of Nothing at All! Holding out for a Hero! It’s All Coming Back to Me Now!) I feel confident that every minute of every hour, at least one person in the world is in a karaoke room fumbling across one of his high-note bridges. Making messy love out of lyrics on the wall.2 If you follow the sonic thread, there's a direct link from the Rocky Horror Picture Show to Bat Out of Hell to... Celine Dion. And thanks to our dad, my brother and I listened to all of the above (and everything in between) on full blast. I have no guilt or shame; instead, thanks to Steinman, “(nights of) endless pleasure.”
And a bit (ok, a lot) of dramatic flair. Oh, the drama of it all! Jim Steinman taught me that love (and, more importantly, lust) is a visceral, messy endeavor. It is frequently loud, often achy, and worth every over-the-top minute.
Interlude: dare you to watch the thirsty, erotic, fantastical first video for ”It's All Coming Back to Me Now”. Tom of Finland meets Xanadu? You’ll never hear the Celine megahit the same way again. You’re welcome.3
Showtunes, Jim Steinman, Dolly Parton... a friend once wisely pointed out that I was a lover not of any particular genre but of "story songs.” I look for a song to take me on a journey, memorialize a time, and/or teach me a character lesson. Extra points for a key change or a catharsis.
While our dad's music leaned towards the melodramatic and throaty, our mom taught us to appreciate quieter, more introspective singer-songwriters. She was a 1960s teen who preferred Bob Dylan’s lyrics over Beatlemania. From our mom, we developed an affinity for acoustic guitars and social justice while listening to Joan Baez and The Band. (See also the aforementioned Harry Chapin.)
After we moved from Georgia to Northern Virginia, my summers always featured at least one night under the stars, listening to live music at Wolf Trap. (The only national park dedicated to the performing arts!) My parents warmed me up with many summers of Peter, Paul, and Mary before I was old enough to attend the Indigo Girls, ani difranco, and k.d. lang solo or with friends. The nights I’ve spent at Wolf Trap are so memorable I can tell you exactly where I sat at each show. On the off months, my mom and I regularly went see acoustic sets at The Barns at Wolf Trap or at Alexandra’s legendary music hall, The Birchmere.
The combination of parenting a small human, the pandemic, and a series of health situations had led to many years passing without us seeing a show together. So before we said goodbye to summer, I drove my mom’s hand-me-down powder blue Camry to Virginia so she and I could spend another evening reconnecting with the guitars and the trees. Lucky for us, one of my newer favorite bands (Dawes) was opening for one of her our old favorites (Mary Chapin Carpenter).
On that steamy, late-August night, I had one more perfect evening at Wolf Trap, introducing my mom to songs that held me through heartbreak and singing our shared favorites together.
One thing I love about my mother is how wholly she leans in to embrace what her kids are into. She wanted to know everything about Dawes and quickly learned the choruses so she could sing along. During one memorable moment, she turned to me and whispered, “This feels like your new love.”
It’s no accident that the songs my mother and I share paint a world where loving someone (and yourself) requires reckoning with complexity, independence, and resiliency.
Falling in love is a deeply self-conscious, vulnerable delight. I didn’t see this one approaching before arriving with a bang. And now I’m learning what it means to find love in your 40s—and to have that witnessed by your kid.
For my own daughter, my wish is that she will grow up and find a love—or many—that feels like this:
I let time go lightly when I'm here with you,
I let time go lightly when the day is through.
I keep a watch on time when I've got work to do,
I let time go lightly with you.
xx Kyle
❤️❤️
We LOVE Count Vacula and The Imagine Neighborhood podcast, and also…
Thank you, Mental Floss for this life-affirming write-up on Jim Steinman and Celine.
Love everything about this.
This is so awesome!! My sons love music of almost every genre. They love Rock - they heard it from the womb & beyond! They love rap and are quite good and doing Rap in Karaoke! The music you mentioned took me back to when I listened to Harry Chaplin - and OMG a name I’ve not heard Mary in such a long time!!
This is so sweet & oh my falling in love as your daughter watched - dreams do come true!!