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The doula?s suggestion was an innocent one: ?Bring some music you like into the delivery room.? How could she have known that her words were being directed at a music obsessive with an almost religious devotion to creating the perfect mixtape" Even my wife, Jillian, the recipient of countless painstakingly curated mixes, couldn?t have known how that simple recommendation would launch a trimester?s worth of work to create the perfect baby-birthing playlist.
Our entire relationship could be traced via playlists, from the earliest ones I made for her when we were dating to those that had accompanied us on every trip we ever took and played at every party we?d hosted. A mixtape to set the mood during childbirth seemed natural, even inevitable. I called the mix simply ?Labour? and worked on it, a little bit every day, for months. I was looking for Jillian?s favourite songs with a chilled-out vibe and appropriate lyrics?a task easier said than done.
One of the first albums that came to mind was Neutral Milk Hotel?s classic, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It was a terrible choice. I somehow forgot that the title track features lyrics like: ?And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea.? Not exactly great motivation for a woman in labour. Furthermore, no matter how amazing a song it is, ?Two-Headed Boy? has no place in a delivery room.
For a long while, it just became a process of elimination: Joy Division?s ?Love Will Tear Us A...