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Stephen Spencer Taps Into His Toddler's Imagination to Create Whimsical Songs
Tunes like 'Apple Man' and 'Regular Rabbit' have gone viral
Stephen Spencer, a New York-based composer and songwriter, appreciates his 3-year-old daughter’s active imagination. So much so that he turns the tales she spins about a mermaid, an apple man and a snow-woman into catchy songs that he shares via social media.
When Spencer first started posting videos of these songs on his Instagram page, he figured mostly family and friends would be interested. But in just a few months, he’s rocketed from a following of under 40 to more than 300,000 on Insta and nearly 100,000 on TikTok. And fans can now stream the songs “Apple Man” and “Regular Rabbit” on Spotify and elsewhere.
Here, Spencer, who holds a PhD in music theory and composition and lectures at Hunter College, discusses how his daughter inspires his creativity. We learn about his songwriting process and the directions this father-daughter collaboration might take.
MUSE: Do you remember the moment you realized you could do something creative with the stuff your daughter was saying?
Stephen Spencer: I’ve been amazed at her creativity and her way of making sense of the world forever—even before she was speaking. So I had been turning her baby babblings into little musical ideas. I find it inherently funny to take whatever little sounds or sentences or utterances and make them musical. But when she started giving me these stories—real narratives that had a beginning, middle and end combined with toddler logic and grammar—they just sounded like songs to me. So I thought I should record something and share it with my friends to honor what I was hearing but also to capture this moment where she was coming up with these characters.
Has your daughter and the way she expresses herself made you think about creativity in new ways?
Totally. I think that children are the perfect model for how we should create as adults. There’s this unfiltered joy. You’re in the sandbox playing and not worrying about how things should be judged or appraised. There’s just this, “Okay, what do I want to do next? What do I like about this?” And yeah, it has inspired me as a creator. It’s also inspired me as an educator. I teach musicians at the college level. I have students who are composers, and something I talk about a lot is trying to find this kind of innocence. If you can look at your work the way a 3-year-old looks at something and just follow the thread, later you can think about whether it needs to be revised.
When you write a song, what’s the process like?
It’s funny because there’s this stream-of-consciousness from her, and I’m treating it very seriously. Sometimes melodies will come to me fully formed, but a lot of the time I’m working for several days on these and being meticulous about the way that I want them to sound. What usually happens is I work at the piano, and I have a transcript or an audio recording of what she said, and I’m trying to find ways that her words can land musically. I want to pick up on the rhythms in her speech and find a way to shape the melody.
You could have written songs for kids given that you are quoting your daughter’s thoughts, but these are songs for adults.
I didn’t ever think of them as children’s music. I was thinking of this as music for adults. Plenty of parents have told me that their children—usually older children—enjoy it. My nieces and nephews really enjoy it. They’re between 7 and 10.
This could turn into a lifelong collaboration between you and your daughter. But I assume you’re taking it day-by-day, and you’ll see what your daughter’s level of interest is in creating music as she gets older.
I try not to put any pressure on her, of course. Part of the magic is this is what she wants to do, and I’m capturing it.
When I listen to songs like “Apple Man,” I imagine music videos with animation. Have you thought about collaborating with visual artists to create clips for any of the songs?
That’s in the works. I’ve had interest from a number of animators.
What other creativity possibilities could spring from this?
I can see it going in a lot of different directions. The possibility of making children’s books excites me for sure. I’m protective of what’s at the center of it, which is just these moments at home with my daughter. So I’m hesitant to want to pull this in directions that would take me away from that. This is a celebration of family.
