Mum, is it time for my vocals?
In featuring her son Angelo on a song from her new album, Adele has joined a specific type of celebrity, in a move that is often more revealing about the parents than the kids.
It’s the pop star’s equivalent of “take your child to work” day. That moment, a few albums into your career, when studied cool gives way to parental pride and you feature your offspring in a song. The latest star to take the plunge is Adele, whose new album, 30, features her son Angelo on a ballad called My Little Love. This being an Adele track, Mummy’s a bit blue. “I don’t really know what I’m doing,” she sighs, to which her nine-year-old squeakily replies: “At all?”
Most kiddie collaborations employ their guest vocalists in more uplifting ways. The classic encapsulation of the joy of parenthood is, of course, Stevie Wonder’s Isn’t She Lovely?. Celebrating the birth of Wonder’s daughter, Aisha Morris, on February 2, 1975, the song starts with the first cry of a baby - not Aisha - recorded during a real birth and ends with a recording of Wonder bathing a giggling Aisha as a toddler. Obviously, the bath can’t go by without an extended harmonica solo from Daddy.
Cute kids provide a reliable shortcut to emotional engagement. I defy you not to go “Awww!” at Willow Sage Hart, then seven, joining her mum Pink in a rendition of A Million Dreams from The Greatest Showman. These things are often more revealing about the parents than the kids, however. Take Jay-Z and Beyonce, who have both roped in their daughter, Blue Ivy Carter. Jay-Z was first off the mark, releasing Glory in 2012 when she was just two days old.
“My greatest creation was you,” he raps on a track that features her cries and heartbeat. My creation? Isn’t he forgetting someone? Beyonce does get a mention later in the song, although the line will make Blue Ivy cringe when she’s older, given that it refers to her conception. “You was made in Paris,” Jay-Z raps. “And Mama woke up the next day and shot her album package.” Touching story, Jay.
Beyonce, by contrast, waited until her daughter was sentient before taking her into the studio. She featured a giggling Blue Ivy in 2013 on Blue and as an older girl in 2019 on Brown Skin Girl, which is about racial empowerment as much as maternal love. Blue Ivy also appears in the video, which won Best Music Video at the Grammys last year, making the nine-year-old the second youngest Grammy winner after Leah Peasall, then eight, who won in 2001 for her contribution to the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.
Children can also ease heartbreak, as Chris Martin would attest, having employed his daughter, Apple, as a backing vocalist on Coldplay’s Always in My Head, a reaction to his “conscious uncoupling” from Gwyneth Paltrow. This year their son, Moses, sang on the band’s track Humankind.
Jay-Z aside, a surprising number of rappers have recorded with their kids. Will Smith’s Just the Two of Us is a gloopily sweet ode to fatherhood introduced by his son Trey ("Now, Daddy, this is a very sensitive subject"). The rest are less wholesome, from Eminem’s daughter, Hailie Jade Mathers, chirping, “I think my dad’s gone crazy!” on My Dad’s Gone Crazy to 50 Cent’s son, Marquise Jackson, yelling, “Drop that shit!” on These N****s Ain’t Hood. Daddy must have been so proud.
Disturbing in a different way is the concert footage on YouTube in which Whitney Houston is joined during My Love Is Your Love by her tiny daughter Bobbi Kristina. It’s sweet to a point, but tempered by the suspicion that Bobbi is terrified, and the knowledge that both would die in tragic circumstances years later.
In 2014 Tori Amos tackled the “language barrier” that can exist between mothers and their teenage girls in Promise, a duet with her daughter Natashya Hawley, then 13. “Promise not to say/ That you told me so,” Natashya sings. “Promise not to say/ That I’m getting too old,” her mum replies.
Kate Bush, though, wins the prize for most meaningful involvement of an artist’s progeny in their music. Bush’s son, Bertie, has worked with her several times, appearing at her London shows in 2014, and replacing Rolf Harris’s vocals on a re-recorded version of her album Aerial. Their loveliest collaboration, however, was her 2011 song, Snowflake, recorded when he was 13. No, the title isn’t mocking Bertie’s woke fragility. It’s a genuine duet, designed to show off what Bush has described as his “really beautiful voice”.
She would say that - but she’s right. “I was born in a cloud/ Now I am falling/ I want you to catch me,” he sings, showing some of his mother’s delicacy and otherworldliness. The song is also about the fleeting nature of a boy soprano. “Bertie still has his high voice, but it’s also a fragile instrument, because soon his voice will drop,” Bush told Mojo. “I thought there was a nice meeting of the two ideas - of this fragile little snowflake making its journey, and this voice that will soon pass.”
IT’S A FAMILY AFFAIR
The best songs featuring the children of the stars
Stevie Wonder featuring Aisha Morris: Isn’t She Lovely
Pink featuring Willow Sage Hart: A Million Dreams
Beyonce featuring Blue Ivy Carter: Blue
Beyonce featuring Blue Ivy Carter: Brown Skin Girl
Coldplay featuring Apple Martin: Always in My Head
Coldplay featuring Moses Martin: Humankind
Will Smith featuring Trey Smith: Just the Two of Us
Eminem featuring Hailie Jade Mathers: My Dad’s Gone Crazy
Tori Amos featuring Natashya Hawley: Promise
Kate Bush featuring Bertie McIntosh: Snowflake
Listen to the playlist here
The Times