the songs that you have in your head are from the Raffi album Baby Beluga. This past weekend my father-in-law shared a funny story about my husband when he was a toddler. He came to them and said that he had a song stuck in his "thinker" because he couldn't think of what to say - brain, mind, etc. Well, I have had "Day O" stuck in my thinker for two weeks now ever since I put that in the CD player for my daughter. It is a really catchy song and it always makes me think of the movie Beetlejuice, which scared the crap out of me when I was younger.
I wondered about the line "I work all night 'til the morning come" - did banana pickers work at night? How could they see the banana spiders in the dark? (Spiders literally give me the goosebumps and we trap at least one a day in my house, so that's why I worried!) Well, according to Wikipedia, the song is a Jamaican folk song thought to be song by Jamaican banana pickers loading bananas at night. Raffi replaced the original line which was "I work all night on a drink of rum". More child friendly. He also replaced the line "Hide the deadly black taranch-la" with "A beautiful bunch o' ripe banana!" So there WERE spiders - I was right to be worried!
Its nice to know that some kids songs aren't just words that don't make sense. I actually learned something today!
What is your favorite children's song?