The slightly unsettling truth about the “Happy Song” is that it wasn’t accidental; it was meticulously crafted to produce a specific reaction. BETC, a London advertising agency, was commissioned by Cow & Gate, a major baby food company, to create a piece of music that would specifically enchant infants between six months and two years old. On the agency’s website, you can find a video documenting the creation of what they call “the world’s first song scientifically proven to make babies happy.”
This wasn’t a whimsical endeavor. Over several months of rigorous testing, a team comprised of both developmental and musical psychologists worked with British parents to pinpoint the sounds that brought the most joy to their little ones. They compiled recordings of these popular sounds and then tested them directly on babies, carefully monitoring their heart rates, facial expressions, and vocalizations. The video footage shows babies connected to heart monitors while scientists analyzed seemingly complex data-modeling software. The culmination of this extensive research was then handed to the acclaimed musician Imogen Heap. Her resulting song cleverly incorporates many of the sounds – beeping horns, ringing bells, meowing cats – that were identified as most captivating to the largest number of babies.
This leads us to a somewhat unavoidable conclusion: this song is, in a literal sense, designed for mind control. The song is such an efficient delivery system for dopamine that, as I find myself playing it for the tenth time in a row, I can’t help but wonder if I’m inadvertently hardwiring my daughter’s young brain for a lifetime of addictive tendencies. There’s also something undeniably creepy about the song’s manipulative approach, using babies’ emotions to promote a baby food brand to parents. It’s not a stretch to interpret this song – conceived as a corporate branding exercise, nurtured in a petri dish of data and audience testing, optimized for maximum engagement, and distributed through algorithmic targeting – as a disturbing escalation of current trends in how culture is produced under capitalism. Thinking about it this way, “The Happy Song” seems to directly contradict my own parenting philosophy, which largely boils down to: “Keep capitalism as far away from my children as possible, for as long as possible.”
However, these are somewhat theoretical concerns. Since “The Happy Song” entered our lives, our purchases of Cow & Gate products remain at zero. Based on this admittedly limited experience, the song is significantly more effective at making babies happy than it is at persuading adults to buy things. And that’s precisely what’s so wonderful about the song: it simply works. When she’s upset, the song starts, and then she’s happy. In its simplicity, it feels almost like magic.
The world is a complicated and often bleak place, and I’m acutely aware that the window of opportunity to transform my daughter’s sadness into joy with a cheerful little song is rapidly closing. If the ad agency’s research is accurate, my daughter will be outside their target demographic in less than four months. It’s this awareness of its fleeting nature that makes the song, and its effect on her, so incredibly precious. It won’t always work, because she won’t always be this small and innocent. But right now, it does work. Right now, it’s the greatest song ever written.
