Beth Nielson Chapman: The Mighty Sky


Louise writes:

I wasn’t familiar with singer Beth Neilson Chapman but was asked to review this album of songs about astronomy, written in collaboration with the Vanderbilt Dyer Observatory director Rocky Alvey. As the mother of a son who is crazy about space, and very knowledgeable about it too, I thought it would be interesting to give it a listen. At first I thought the music wasn’t really my thing – a little too soft country maybe and the first song didn’t really hold the kids’ attention, but each song is actually a different genre, which I think makes it very interesting for the kids – giving them a bit of a feel for different music including calypso, blues, country and more. They don’t sound too novelty – fun, but not silly.

What makes the album special isn’t really the music itself, it’s the lyrics – these are not just typical simple songs about space in the style of ‘five little men in a flying saucer’ (which my kids love too) but generally very sophisticated, intelligent and educational songs about astronomy (though Felix did have to question part of ‘Through Hubble’s Eyes’ which mentioned looking at the Sun, sand said to me, very seriously “you should never look at the Sun, Mummy”. A lot of them are also amusing but still manage to be educational: ‘Little Big Song’ was a particular favourite of mine, making comparisons between the size of celestial objects and smaller things to get an idea of the scale of the universe.

The kids thought it was brilliant and seemed to really enjoy listening to it. I don’t know how many of the lyrics they understood on first listening but they definitely picked up on a lot of things they knew about and I think listening to it again in the future they’ll be able to decipher more and will get a lot out of it. Considering my little spaceman believes he knows everything there is to know about the Universe, I think he will enjoy this a great deal, and maybe even learn something from it!

 

Take a look at Beth Nielson Chapman’s website for more information about where you can purchase The Mighty Sky