Nothing honours fatherhood quite like forgetting to celebrate Father’s Day, but here we’ve gone one further. One to the tune of finding 15 songs that your dad probably won’t like, appreciate or have any other reaction to but awkwardly nodding his head in time while you stare him out to ensure he really appreciated the sentiment behind them.
So, we asked our writers for their favourite Dad related songs, with the aim of finding more Cat Stevens than ‘Cats In The Cradle’. The resulting playlist incorporated all stages of fatherhood, from the nurturer to the carer to the forgetful, and incorporated all realms of music, from Boney M and Madonna to Stereophonics and Dire Straits, with a backlash of wishing your Dad was Bruce Lee driving around Exeter’s streets in a big yellow tractor. Welcome to the West Country.
Also making the list is “the most rinsed song of all time” by Lionel Richie, an offering from the Queen Bee, and a song from The Temptations suggesting that your papa – background aside – was a Rollin’ Stone. Tell that to Messrs Wood, Jagger, Watts and Richards, and see how they like it.
“I’m gonna be like you, Dad, you know I’m gonna be like you”
Here we have it. Happy Father’s Day!
Tristan Gatward, Online Music Editor
With thanks to Eamonn Crowe, Ollie Neale, David John, James Beeson, Esther Docherty, Theo Stone and Harriet Somers.