Before I had a kid, I was certain that I would introduce my precious bundle of joy to only my music and that we would never listen to so-called children’s music. Heavens no. And as you may already have guessed, that, along with so many other choices, went rapidly out the window as my daughter arrived and made her actual preferences known. Loudly. And so we do often listen to her music, and sometimes I even like it. Luckily for both of us, one really good compromise that I was able to introduce early on was the Rockabye Baby! series.

The concept is simple — take the songs of popular artists (some current, some from the past) and reproduce them as instrumentals with glockenspiel, vibraphone, mellotron and other lullaby-esque instrumentation. To the casual listener — or the 2-year-old who doesn’t know any better — the music is soothing. Polite. Pretty. To the adult, it’s the familiar tunes of any artist from Nine Inch Nails (yes, “Closer” is on there, and no, you may not want to sing the chorus if your kid is of the parroting age) and the Flaming Lips to Black Sabbath and Tool to Elvis and the Beatles, all made palatable for sensitive ears. Just a flip through the full artist roster will make you smile, I promise.

Even better, some of the tracks go beyond their own novelty and into works of, dare I say, art — or at least songs that can stand on their own. For example, Rockabye’s versions of songs by Radiohead and the Cure sound melodic and lovely. But even the lighter pop offerings are just fine — the Madonna disc, for example, brings back fun memories, and Kanye West gets the Rockabye treatment with style. “Gold Digger” as a lullaby. Really. It works – and it cracks me up every time. In fact, some of the song choices are just so ridiculous (“Scar Tissue” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers? “Jeremy” by Pearl Jam? “Enter Sandman” by Metallica? “Beat on the Brat” by the Ramones? Anything by Tool?) that you can’t help but smile at the effort.

These discs make great baby shower gifts for the music lover in your life, and they’re excellent to listen to on long car trips when you want your kid to just take a nap already but you don’t want to fall asleep yourself. New titles are being released all the time, including the Smiths, the Foo Fighters, and the aforementioned Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Don’t forget to think outside the crib — these CDs would also make great background music for your next party, whether it’s kid-friendly or adults only. Better than Muzak for sure. These have the effect of watching someone pause, listen intently, and then smile with recognition. The treatment of the songs is so clever that a country fan might still enjoy Green Day and a pop fan might find the Aerosmith disc in regular rotation. But no matter what your musical taste, I suspect there’s a Rockabye Baby! disc that will likely appeal to you.

Many of the Rockabye Baby! CDs are available on Amazon also.

(Disclosure: Atomic Family is an Amazon associate.)