From the recording LP13 EMPOWERMENT
Here are all the reasons why there aren’t many songs about children:
The core audience & market expectations
Mainstream pop is aimed at teens and young adults — the biggest consumers of streaming, radio, and concerts.
Songs about romance, attraction, and nightlife match that audience’s life stage and fantasies.
Record labels often avoid themes that don’t fit this demographic “sweet spot,” so topics like parenting or children get sidelined.
Emotional complexity doesn’t match pop’s format
Love and heartbreak fit neatly into a 3–4 minute catchy hook format — clear emotion, simple arc.
Songs about children often carry more layered, subtle feelings: pride, fear, nostalgia, vulnerability.
Those emotions can be harder to distill into repetitive, hook-driven choruses without losing depth.
Avoiding sentimentality risk
There’s a fine line between heartfelt and “too sentimental” in pop music.
Songs about children can easily veer into overly sweet or cliché territory, which producers fear won’t feel “cool” or commercially fresh.
Personal privacy & relatability
Writing about your own child can feel too personal for many artists.
The audience may not relate if they’re not parents themselves.
Some artists avoid mentioning children to protect their family’s privacy.
Genre segregation
Themes about children tend to appear more in folk, country, gospel, or singer-songwriter genres, where storytelling and life stages are more central.
Pop often focuses on immediacy and fantasy, not the day-to-day reality of parenting.
I hope you will prove me wrong – but I bet not many people will listen to this….even though having children is perhaps the most important thing we will ever do. Crazy.
Lyrics
Songs We Never Sing
[Verse 1]
We write about lovers in candlelit rooms,
The rush and the ruin, the fire and the fumes.
We dance in the heartbreak, we swim in the wine,
But the cradle is silent in most of the lines.
[Verse 2]
Maybe it’s harder to capture their light,
Than chasing the shadows we meet in the night.
A child’s not a metaphor, not a disguise,
They’re truth with a heartbeat and wonder in eyes.
[Chorus]
’Cause love songs are easy when the rules are well-worn,
And rage has a rhythm we’ve all played before.
But joy that is fragile, too pure for the stage,
It slips through the verses, it hides from the page.
[Verse 3]
The industry hums on the currency of pain,
On passion and longing, and loss like the rain.
But children don’t sell in a chorus that bites,
Their laughter’s too honest for marketable nights.
[Bridge]
How do you rhyme with a first step?
How do you rhyme with a tear on your neck?
When the moment is fleeting, the words feel too small,
So the radio leaves it alone after all.
[Chorus]
’Cause love songs are easy when the rules are well-worn,
And rage has a rhythm we’ve all played before.
But joy that is fragile, too pure for the stage,
It slips through the verses, it hides from the page.
[Outro]
One day I’ll write it, though it may not belong
Where heartbreak is king and the hook must be strong.
A song for the laughter, the hands that are small,
For the lives in our lives that inspire it all.