My kid and I like That Baby CD, which isn’t just for babies.
My husband just caught me drumming along to “We Got the Beat.” (Yeah – WE got it!!) He declared, “You are extremely silly.” I blame you, Cluricaun.
sigh edit windows…
…and “Where are you Christmas?” from the Jim Carrey Grinch.
Lately they’re into Ofra Haza “Galbi” and “Face to Face” and Angelique Kidjo “Naima”, “Agolo”, A.R. Rahman “Aye Udi Udi Udi”, Mediaeval Baebes, and Point of Grace.
If that’s the worst thing I get blamed for this weekend I’ll eat my hat. 
This is turning out so well, I love the suggestions. Hell, I even like some of the songs myself. Might have to make myself a Kids Playlist.
How about songs from good old musicals?
Or those old classics from WWII, that kids otherwise will never learn? I learned them from my grandfather, teach them drama/musical theater students now, many of them who start with us at 4-5 years of age. They LOVE that stuff. 
[as for Mozart and classical classics? Don’t be so fast to dismiss. There’s stuff there that kids LOVE and don’t get bored with. Depends how it’s presented to them. Hell, I saw my first opera at 4 – Tales of Hoffman – and I still remember a shitload of stuff about it. I was hooked. Badly. Think about things like Peter and the Wolf, the one narrated by Sting, maybe? It’s awesome!]
Nitpicking my own post: Dad tells me the Scott Joplin recording he has is actually this one, not the one I linked above (the one I linked above kind of sucks, being as it is recordings of piano rolls, whereas *The Red-Back Book *rocks… erm. rags?).
My five year old daughter has the Beatles, Beach Boys greatest hits and even some Neil Young (for some reason she really likes Broken Arrow) on her ipod; not what I would’ve picked for her but that’s what she picked from my collection. She’s never enjoyed the stereotypical “kid’s” music.
ETA: I see Elenfair mentioned musicals, my kids love musicals of all kinds.
I think kids should be exposed to life’s realities. Include some Doors and Jethro Tull, for the downer side of life. Also NWA.
Kids don’t know they’re not sposed to like Classical. If you don’t get em young, that’s all they’ll learn.
Leadbelly Sings for Children and any other of the Smithsonian Folkways stuff.
Lots of Phillip Glass. My parents played tons of Phillip Glass from the time I was a baby until I was 7, and I turned out great! Great, I tell you, and if you disagree, I’ll cut your goddamn dick off and shove it up your ass. I fuck animals! Man, am I stoned right now.
Bravo, but it would’ve been funnier if you’d repeated the paragraph 30 or 40 times :D.
No, no, NO!!!
They will turn the volume up too high and they will damage their hearing. Teens do it, and even adults, but at least you can say they “knew it was dangerous”.
Fuck, in ten years half the population- under 40-will be wearing Bluetooth in one ear and a hearing aid in the other.
I was thinking about this too . . . do your nephew’s parents know that the “earbud” style headphones that Ipods use are really bad for your hearing? I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they’re even worse on young and developing ears.
There’s a control on iPods where you can set a volume limit.
I would recommend regular headphones for tykes, anyway.
My thoughts exactly.
As for more music suggestions, there’s a series of world music cds called Putumayo, which are themed. I personally like the “sounds from the [insert drink/food here] lands” series, and tend to pick up other ones to try out from time to time.
I don’t think earbuds will fit in the tiny ear canals of a 5 year old. Definitely some old Walkman-style headphones are in order, as well as volume controls. That can be tricky with an ipod, though, as I’ve noticed that the sound level varies a LOT between songs. Is there any easy way to tweak them all to the same level when loading them?
My 3.5 year old LOVES classical music, JSexton. And I don’t really listen to it myself, but it’s almost always her pick for bedtime music. If there’s no words, sometimes she makes some up, or sings nonsense syllables, or just listens. Classical is huge in preschools, I don’t really know a kid who doesn’t like it.
For waking hours, she’s way into Elton John (thanks to his *Muppet Show *performances) and David Bowie - the seventies era of both. She can even identify them by sound when she hears an unfamiliar song. She asks, “is dis Ellen John?”
Ooh, good call. I have the Jamaica one. Bought it right out of the cd player of a store I was shopping in.
The earbuds that come with the ipod probably won’t fit kid’s ears. You can buy smaller ones. In my case I prefer to provide my kids with headphones rather than earbuds.
As far as volume controls you can set the preferences to have the sound normalize when importing them but I don’t find it works very well, I prefer to set the volume limit on the ipod and password protect it. You’re right about the level varying greatly. It’s probably a good idea to listen to everything yourself first to make sure they the sound level is OK.
Well, my kids weren’t much help, as most of their suggestions had questionable language (Green Day/Foxboro Hot Tubs, Sugarcult, and the like.)
But we did come up with the B-52s!