At Home with Your Newborn

For when the vibe is dreamy, delirious, and bright.

At Home with Your Newborn -- The Vibe Triangulation

Nouvelle parentalité is a beautiful, delicate, challenging, exciting, sometimes desperate, tear-drenched, hope-filled, frightening, joyous, dreamy, sensational, personal, universal experience. This playlist steps through a day and night in the life of a brand new mother – and lays bare all perfections and imperfections therein.

1. ‘Sky and Sand’ by Fritz Kalkbrenner & Paul Kalkbrenner offers a dreamy and upbeat start to the journey. The brotherly duo coasts above the clouds on waves of electronic beats and understated vocals. The mother is riding high, if a little disbelieving of her new, miraculous life.

   
   

2. The tone shifts somewhat to the quirky, chaotic, upbeat, and somewhat nonsensical, ‘Heart It Races’ by Architecture in Helsinki. Dominated by percussion, this song is a wild, kaleidoscope of sound whose message isn’t immediately clear. This song represents the upheaval of coming home with a newborn – making sure you have all of your possessions, that you have your documentation in order, that the baby is dressed and fed, that the car seat is secure, that a million other little things are in order all while you are sleep deprived and more than a little frantic.

   
   

3. The upswing continues with Taylor Swift’s ethereal, poppy classic ‘Wildest Dreams’ and sees the mother leaning into Swift’s exploration of ‘pre-nostalgia’ as she attempts to hold onto all of the beautiful moments with her newborn because the time is fleeting.

   
   

4. The Smiths’ ‘Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want’ ushers in a tonal shift from positive to subdued. This track represents a sense of longing and desperation. Like all new parents, lead singer Morrissey laments, ‘I haven’t had a dream in a long time.’  With tongue very much in cheek, our mother is longing for sleep pleading into the void: ‘For once in my life let me get what I want, Lord knows it would be the first time.’

   
   

5. ‘Heart Like a Truck’ by Lainey Wilson continues to explore the struggles, rather than the victories of new motherhood. Against a backdrop of fiddles, electric guitar, and a beautiful bassline, Wilson belts out that she’s got a heart like a truck, and boy does it take one to deal with the dramatic hormonal shift brought on by childbirth. This is a track for the moments when you’re simultaneously mopping your floors and crying so hard that you can’t see.

   
   

6. Sleep deprivation and intense emotions lead to a state of delirium represented by ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ by Tame Impala. Musically, the song’s vocals and electronic backing feel like thick honey dripping off a picnic table on a hot summer day. It’s a track for when you think you’re getting the hang of the mom thing and then something new and exciting (or sometimes horrifying) happens.

   
   

7. The delirious energy continues with ‘Sweet Dreams, TN’ by The Last Shadow Puppets. This song explores a kind of wild and desperate love, which you quite feel is beyond the comprehension of anyone else. Lead singer Alex Turner belts out, ‘I just don’t recognize this fool that you have made me’ accompanied by the big band sound of strings and guitar. The whole thing sounds like its coming from the middle of a big, dark, empty room.

   
   

8. Another tonal shift comes with ‘Farmhouse’ by Phish. This song acts as a more upbeat, though somewhat somber, and definitively jammy lullaby. The song is grounded in the easy vocals of Trey Anastasio and vivid imagery of immovable cluster flies on the farm, so the band is allowed to enjoy waves of vibrant sonic exploration. ‘Farmhouse’ is up there with The Grateful Dead’s ‘Shakedown Street’ as one of the great studio renditions of jam band ballads that are typically better enjoyed live.

   
   

9. Up next is another upbeat, dreamy tune, ‘Hold On, We’re Going Home’ courtesy of Drake, which offers a semi-crazed sense of attachment so familiar to the experience of the new mother. ‘I got my eye on you,’ Drake says, ‘you’re everything that I see.’ This obsessive occupation is wrapped in a chill beat and carried by Drake’s soft vocals.

   
   

10. Sensitive hip hop transitions to sensitive R&B with The Altons’ ‘Tangled up in You.’ This song is a slow ballad about an all-consuming love that’s delightfully reminiscent of Smoky Robinson. Layering in lilting vocal harmonies and all the sounds of the 1960s, this song feels like a slow dance, a warm hug, a rock-a-bye, baby.

    
    

11. Like a slow, quiet, slide into sleep, John Mayer comes in with ‘Gravity,’ yet another lullaby, which is admittedly a little broken-hearted. Mayer’s soft vocals and virtuosic guitar produces a calming, bluesy, and, in the end, hopeful tune that pulls at your heart in all the right ways.

    
    

12. The final track of this vibe is ‘This Feeling’ by Alabama Shakes, which concludes the journey on an achingly slow and sweet note. This tune is sonically minimal, relying on percussion, strings, and vocal layering to create the magic. It sets a final tone of acceptance – acceptance of situation and of self – and above all hope.

This vibe’s bonus track is another song from The Last Shadow Puppets’ second album, ‘Everything You’ve Come to Expect.’ ‘Miracle Aligner’ is another rich, dreamy track. It sounds like chasing after your lover through the hedgerow maze outside of a wealthy lord’s estate under a brisk, clear, stary sky. I had to include it because it seems to be my newborn’s favorite song.

Listen to the Vibe