The Ultimate Dad Rock Playlist

By Lindsay Zoladz

Dear listeners,

This Sunday is Father’s Day, and I would like to celebrate the only way I know how — with a playlist of dad rock.

What is dad rock? You know it when you hear it, but it’s difficult to define exactly, as I learned when I considered the supposed genre in an essay I wrote four Father’s Days ago*. One thing I want to make clear is that, while it’s an easy concept to poke fun at, I don’t consider the term “dad rock” to be an insult, per se. A lot of great music falls into the category, and you certainly don’t have to be a dad to enjoy it. Much of what I was grappling with in that essay was the fact that, in my 30s, I have come around to loving a lot of what I once dismissed as “dad music.” Perhaps, spiritually speaking at least, I am a dad.

I associate dad rock with a certain laid-back, lived-in proficiency — an age and comfort level at which you no longer feel you have to prove your virtuosity but can just sit back and let it speak for itself. Accordingly, quite a few of the songs I’ve chosen here represent bands (Wilco, the Who and Pink Floyd, to name a few) in the middle years of their careers, polishing the rougher edges of their sounds while remaining indelibly themselves. Quite a few — from artists like Steely Dan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and Bruce Springsteen — are straight from my own dad’s record collection, and, as you’ll see below, he even makes a cameo, offering a corrective to his only complaint about this newsletter.

Last week, a website I had never heard of called Merchoid conducted a questionably scientific poll that asked 3,000 Americans, “Which band truly epitomizes dad rock today?” The names that appeared in the Top 10 responses were horrifying: Nickelback, Blink-182, Red Hot Chili Peppers … Limp Bizkit?! Sure, I get that time marches on and that the pop-punk and nü-metal fans of yesteryear are aging into fatherhood. But something about the antic scatting of the Chili Peppers or the teenage-boy humor of Blink-182 does not square with the easygoing cool I associate with dad rock.

So consider this playlist a rejoinder to that list, or maybe just an argument starter. But whatever you do, make sure you consider it The Amplifier’s way of saying happy Father’s Day.

Turn it up! That’s enough,

Lindsay

*My own father really enjoyed the article, except the part where I told the entire readership of The New York Times that he used to drive a Ford Taurus. Sorry, Dad.