Rockin' Friday: Yakety Yak

This week’s Rockin’ Friday song has been the toughest one for me to choose in the several months I’ve been doing this.  When applicable, I try to select something timely (holiday, newsworthy events, etc.) and choose a related song. But today is my mother’s birthday and this is the second year that she isn’t around for me to wish her a happy birthday. Or at least if I do talk to her, she won’t talk back.

I went through dozens of ideas while trying to select a song and ultimately I picked one that reminded me of time we shared when I was young. As the youngest of 3 kids, I was the last one who needed to be driven around town in her big Buick station wagon with the fake-wood paneling on the sides. We shared a lot of quality time together. She loved music. She loved to sing the songs from her youth,  and as a baby boomer she was a child of the 1950s.  One song that she always liked was The Coasters’ Yakety Yak.

I hadn’t thought of the song in that context before, (at least consciously) because I started playing Yakety Yak for my own Little Dude close to a year ago. It’s short, fast and doesn’t contain a lot of tricky words. I guess that sort of describes him, too.

The song is about the punishment a kid will incur if he doesn’t do things he’s tasked with. And it does contain the ultimate parental order as part of its’ refrain:

Yakety Yak, Don’t talk back!

Happy Birthday. I wish you could talk back.

My mother & me, 2008