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"  &amp;quot;Have you ever heard of Elton John?&amp;quot; my third grader asked from the back of my mini-van. He was reading the liner notes from his Leeann Rimes CD, part of his growing music collection. &amp;quot;Remember when David Archuleta sang &amp;#039;Don&amp;#039;t Let the Sun Go Down on Me&amp;#039; on American Idol?&amp;quot; I asked. &amp;quot;Yeah,&amp;quot; he answered. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s an Elton John song,&amp;quot; I replied. He was impressed. I mean, if his favorite singer sang a song, the guy who wrote it must be pretty good. In fact, everyone in his CD collection sings rather nicely: Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, Carrie Underwood, James Taylor. The boy loves a crooner. That&amp;#039;s because the boy wants to be one. So, I&amp;#039;m not going to push the music of my era -- the 80&amp;#039;s -- on him, because let&amp;#039;s face it: The music we paid to hear in concert during the Reagan era was was more about guitars, drums and tight leather pants than good quality singing. If he wants good singers, I&amp;#039;m going to make sure he hears good singers, no matter when they recorded their songs. When we got to the CD section of the bookstore, I asked him what kind of music he was interested in this time around. &amp;quot;Rock,&amp;quot; he said. I thought about good rock singers whose music would satiate my Archuleta wannabe&amp;#039;s appetite for crooning. Springsteen? As much as it pains this Jersey girl to admit, he&amp;#039;s not the best singer on the Billboard Top 100. Besides, I have his complete collection of CDs at home. Jon Bon Jovi? He sure can sing, but I&amp;#039;m not in the mood for hearing &amp;quot;Living on a Prayer&amp;quot; repeatedly. I got that out of my system in 1987. I know! Queen. I found a Queen Greatest Hits CD on sale for $9.99 that was (thankfully) void of photos of lead singer Freddie Mercury in a unitard. I offered to buy the CD for him, leaving him $20 of his accumulated allowance money to spend on a Kelly Clarkson CD. He adores his American Idols, and besides, they can belt out tunes. Also, I fully intended to snag his new Queen CD by offering to &amp;quot;keep it in my car.&amp;quot; Sometimes, a mom just needs to drum on her dashboard and sing, &amp;quot;We Are the Champions&amp;quot;...preferably when the kids aren&amp;#039;t around. A mom also needs to sing along to Dexy&amp;#039;s Midnight Runners&amp;#039; &amp;quot;Come on Eileen&amp;quot; and A-Ha&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Take on Me&amp;quot; while remembering a time when she wasn&amp;#039;t driving around in a &amp;quot;Loser Cruiser,&amp;quot; as my niece calls my mini-van, wondering if that thumping noise is from my kid&amp;#039;s baseball or if the transmission is about to fall out. I just turn up the radio and suddenly, I can&amp;#039;t hear it anymore. Also, I feel like I&amp;#039;m 18 and driving a Camaro back to Boston for the semester, instead of the Loser Cruiser to Cub Scouts. But I&amp;#039;m not going to be one of those parents who limits their child&amp;#039;s musical education to the songs of their day, as though &amp;quot;Video Killed the Radio Star&amp;quot; is the best thing to come out of a recording studio, ever. And though Elton John and others recorded some very nice songs while I was studying for final exams, there&amp;#039;s more music out there for my little singer to add to his collection. On the way home, we cranked up &amp;quot;We Are the Champions&amp;quot; on my car stereo, and I even drummed on the dashboard. But, back in his room, when my third grader played some of his music collection for me, I chose Tony Bennett&amp;#039;s duet with Diana Krall of &amp;quot;The Best is Yet to Come.&amp;quot; The best doesn&amp;#039;t always come from your childhood, although for my nine-year-old, it just might. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/parenting/a22173/the-boy-who-loves-crooners/?src=shelter_footer>