Radio Clash

I can't get Flo-Rida's oral-sex request song, "Whistle," out of my head, and I blame summer camp counselors.

I mark the beginning of the end of my children's pop music innocence as Friday, August 10. That day I drove them to Connecticut for a long weekend visit with my family. There was a lot of traffic, and it was raining, so the trip took an extra hour. During those 150 minutes, Owen and Amelia demanded (OK, strongly requested) to listen to various pop radio stations. Because I'm a nice guy, I obliged.

Most recently, Owen had been into electronic music that he'd heard in the background of various Mario Kart-centric videos on YouTube. While I wasn't crazy about some of the cyborg-like vocals and manic guitar and synthesizer parts, the songs were harmless.

But then the high school and college kids staffing the camp where Owen and Amelia went this summer turned the kids onto the likes of Nicki Minaj, Maroon (read: Moron) 5, Katy Perry and Flo-Rida, by way of local radio they played during art and music classes.

So now, whether in the car or at home, all of us are singing/whistling along to Flo-Rida's extremely popular song, only the two adults in the scene having any clue what the song's about. Check it out:

I suspect Owen has stumbled across this video, I'm gonna do my all to keep Amelia away from it. Yes, I know. I sound like an anti-Elvis parent from the '50s, or a grown-up who banned the Beatles from their house in the '60s.

That's what parents do: try to shelter their kids as much as they can, while simultaneously encouraging them to explore the world.

While Flo-Rida's song is the worst offender in terms of lyrical content, there are plenty of other songs where artists or their rapper guests drop bleeped-out F-bombs and s-words. Owen knows what these words are, of course, and thinks it's funny. He points out when the words are digitally edited over.

I listened to plenty of commercial radio when I was a kid. And of course I liked it when songs had bad words that were edited out, such as in Steve Miller's "Airliner," when the phrase, "funky shit going down in the city" was changed to "funky kicks...."

I understand how this works. But I also recognize that my job is to try and keep my kids from becoming foul-mouthed louts who teach other kids about F words that end in "uck" and "ellatio."

I try to convince the kids to listen to my music, something I've done since they were babies. It used to be easy, of course, to just let my iPod run and we'd listen to, dance to and play air guitar to whatever came on.

A few years back, Owen took a shine to indie rockers Chin Up Chin Up, as well as one of my all-time favorites, The Police.

But Owen's 10 now and developing his own tastes in music, which unfortunately at this point don't include rock. So I guess I need to do my best to monitor what he listens to and try and steer him toward the better commercial stuff (whatever the hell that is).

Simultaneously, I need to convince Amelia to listen to safer "girl stuff" like her copy of the "It's My Party!" CD of covers of '60s tunes. In the last few days, I've gotten her to listen to some Deee-Lite, so that makes me happy.

Yeah, I know, I'm like Sisyphus rolling the rock up the hill, or the idiot who opened Pandora's Box. But if I can remove just one pop song from Owen and Amelia's playlists in favor of the Flaming Lips or the B-52's or something sorta cool, then I'll consider it a victory.