Elvis has the definitive version of Peace Love and Understanding as far as I’m concerned. I can’t hear the Nick Lowe version without wanting Elvis’ delivery.
I will never not listen to the Peter Gunn theme. I like to pair it with Secret Agent Man - Devo by preference, but I love the the Ventures’ version too (my dad taught me to play guitar from the Ventures Walk Don’t Run).
It occurred to me that a category test for “dad rock” could be to ask yourself: if these channels still played music, if the video were shown today, would this be on MTV, or VH1?
If all those “Baby Mozart” CDs didn’t work (now that Junior done been all growed up), maybe this will provide consolation.
A fringe benefit of having a 3-CD set of this (see list of songs): you can clear any group of under-30 year olds congregating in your house, for any reason, at any time, as long as you crank it.
The most excellent Good Steely Dan Takes twitter account has some great takes that work for defining this topic if you substitute whichever band for Steely Dan. If you see yourself in this, you just might be listening to dad/mom rock…
How odd. I would have said the original version of “Torn” by Ednaswap is definitely rock, though I’m not going to venture an opinion as to whether it’s “Dad Rock”.
Kudos to Natalie for her cover. Most people doing covers try to reproduce the original or make relatively minor changes. Natalie made major changes, moving it to a different musical genre. It’s a brilliant cover, but I wouldn’t call it rock.
Maybe turn around the definition: “Dad Rock” is what happens when the kid puts on their preferred music, and the dad goes all “Weird Al” on them. For example, consider “Yellow Hearts,” frequently heard whilst driving the kid to school in pre-Covid days. Dad Rock would entail singing “Yellow Hearts” thusly:
She stained her skivvies with yellow sharts Out on the front lawn playin’ Jarts She tried to blame me for her farts But it was her, who cut 'em in Language Arts, Language A-a-a-r-r-rts…
It turns out someone on Tiktok had beat me to it (and now I can’t find that), but I didn’t know that when I came up with mine…
