‘I love you twenty times sixty’: How words written by a three-year-old became such a hit and tear-jerker | music

II was listening to Steven Spencer’s latest song when I suddenly burst into tears. Was it falsetto singing? Swirling harmonies? No, the lyrics were: “What did the poop say? He said ‘I love you’ twenty-sixty times.”

You see, Spencer has a unique singing partner: his three-year-old daughter. For the past four months, he has been posting short songs online based on her stream-of-consciousness stories. There’s a soft soul number about “The Regular Bunny, Who Has a Regular Ponytail Just Like Me.” A song called Funchy the Snow-woman could easily fit on a 1975 album, if not for its lyrical message about using a litter tray in the woods. And a festive tune about a Christmas cat called Harda Tarda, who hopes a crown (“a funny way of saying Santa”) will bring her “a dog, a puppy, and a ninja bread man.”

When he started posting his songs, Spencer had 36 followers. “These books were just for my mom and her book club.” He now has over 250,000 songs and his songs have been listened to 23 million times on Instagram and 5 million times on TikTok. There were demands to turn these little minute-long masterpieces into full album versions. “I’m hesitant to try to stretch it in a way that might spoil the magic of those captured moments,” he says. But there are plans to release something in a longer format. The Spotify release of Regular Rabbit is set for this week.

On first listen, the songs are funny and sweet, a welcome respite from the turmoil of the world. But they’re also an absolute banger. Spencer—who was a member of a funk band in school in Ottawa and is now a professor of composition and music theory at Hunter College in New York City—is incredibly skilled at crafting hooks that won’t leave your head. But what about crying? Because I really didn’t expect that.

“I think the songs resonate with parents of children as young as 3,” Spencer says via video call. “There’s something fleeting about those first few years. I’ve always had a feeling of wanting to keep it because I know it will soon be gone. Music is my way of doing that.”

This makes sense. My daughter is now nine, and although she still writes charming stories, the surreal character names and logical plot lines of dreams have been replaced by more logical metaphors. Hearing Spencer’s songs takes me right back to that little kid time.

But is it more than nostalgia? Spencer, 35, has noticed another surprising response to his work. He recognizes the humor inherent in the contrast between his daughter’s flights of fancy and his careful approach to performing them seriously: the way he turns to the camera to sing passionately about a dinosaur called Pasghetti, for example, is reminiscent of Flight of the Conchords. “But what I didn’t realize was how, for many people, this could be seen as an act of love,” he says. “Listening closely to a child, paying attention, trying to get the words right, without judgment or correction – that turned out to be really moving for some people.”

In fact, fans love the reality of the characters in the songs gold Somewhere instead of gone, or He flew Instead of flew. “Some people said the songs affected them because they weren’t listened to in depth when they were kids,” Spencer says.

The comments under his songs on Instagram (@_stephenspencer) can be as poignant as the music. Under the story about “Apple-the-Stola” (an apple man who was given wings by a fairy so he could fly away and find his missing mother), one listener posted: “I wish I could tell my mother I love you twenty-sixty times. She ‘flew away’ nine years ago. So, if you still have a mother in your life, tell her ‘I love you’ twenty-sixty times.”

“There’s a tendency to interpret her words in a visceral way,” says Spencer, who chose not to give his daughter’s name. This is not entirely coincidental. Spencer selects phrases from stories that he believes have the potential to give deeper meaning and uses them in the refrains of the chorus. In The Christmas Cat Song, Santa responds to the present’s requests by saying, “I’ll give you everything.” Watching Spencer sing this, from the heart with his eyes closed, it’s clear that even though these are his daughter’s words, he’s really repeating them to her.

It’s not his only clever musical trick. While listeners like to compare his work to yacht rock and other great 1970s genres, Spencer says his influences are jazz and classical. “In my theory classes, we often look at Beethoven. There may be a chord change in the development of a sonata where it will be modified into a foreign key. I try to use the same technique in my choruses and bridges.”

Did the growing audience add pressure and expectations to something that started so pure? “I have to forget that aspect, because what makes them successful is that it’s just about being with my daughter and not taking life too seriously.”

Songs are usually put together during the afternoon. Spencer would record her stories on his phone, occasionally coming back for more detail if he felt the lines needed an extra syllable here or there. It’s a real artistic collaboration. So what does his lyricist do with the results? “The answer might be a little disappointing, but from what I can tell, she couldn’t care less. Let’s just say she’s more focused on the process than the product,” he says with a laugh.

A real artist then! “Exactly. I told her that 20 million people listened, but that’s not a meaningful number to her. Put it this way: She thinks I’m seven.”