There is a running gag in the James family: don’t let dad choose the music.
When David James is in control, grungy rock anthems from Pearl Jam, Nirvana or 90s Aussie indie group Moler could start blasting out of the speakers. If, that is, his wife and son let him anywhere near the controls.
David, a schoolteacher by day, says: “To be fair, it got to the stage where I wasn’t really allowed to play my music.”
“Only because his music was so bad!” says his wife Nicole Lenoir-Jourdan, a writer and academic.
Nicole and the couple’s 22-year-old son, Jack, often trade favourite tracks, and share a love of boppy, high-energy hits. But dad David is the alternative black sheep of the family – something that has always been a source of amusement in their Sydney home.
Jack says: “I wouldn’t mind listening to some [of his stuff]. But then there would be some songs dad would listen to that are just very strange, that I think less than 1%, or less than 0.1%, of the population would enjoy.”
David knows what he’s referring to. He says: “Case in point is probably The Yodel Song by Kurt Cobain, which I think is really interesting and fun. But I think Jack and a lot of his friends used to get the giggles and think, how can you possibly listen to this? It’s such a ridiculous song.”
Despite their differences in taste, music is still a point of connection for the tight-knit James family. Together, they’ve learned to master the art of compromise.
For David, when Jack was a teenager, that meant looking for the music they could both enjoy. He began mixing up the rock classics with contemporary hip-hop he thought Jack would like as well – acts such as noughties heroes Drapht and the Hilltop Hoods. The latter became a firm favourite for Jack after David introduced him to the group’s hit track The Nosebleed Section back in the mid-aughts.
And the dedicated mix tape maker tried to strike a balance on their family road trips.
“I took on the responsibility of making the mix tape when we went on holiday trips,” David says. “So I tried to sneak a bit of my stuff in a bit, but I had to probably put a bit of ABBA and a bit of Bruno Mars in to keep everyone else in the car happy.”
Jack thinks that he and his dad have felt more aligned on music taste as the years have gone by. These days, they meet somewhere in the middle, with a shared appreciation of artists such as Halsey and Doja Cat, and regularly swap song recommendations. And David did introduce Jack to one track years ago that’s become an all-time favourite: Cherry Lips by Garbage, which Jack would dance to as a kid and still has on rotation today.
David even sends music he likes to his own father – tactically going for classic tunes from the likes of Billy Joel and Elton John instead of the Aussie hip-hop he showed Jack.
And Nicole and Jack share a lot of favourites. When Jack was younger – and David was out of the house – Nicole would play a mixed bag that spanned opera, classical works from Peer Gynt, and “stuff you can dance to”, be that AC/DC or her enduring favourite, ABBA.
She says: “When a happy song comes on, we used to do this silly thing where we’d all stand in a circle and jump up and down like pogo sticks.”
Music has facilitated other happy memories for Nicole.
“I used to drive Jack to school and that Lily Allen song [F*** You] used to come on,” she says. “Jack and his friends would giggle and think it was hilarious that there was a song that had ‘effing’ in it.”
Today, the songs on the family’s group blend playlist speak to their wide-ranging tastes. Jack’s brings to the blend tracks from Glass Animals, Jack Harlow and Justin Bieber, while Nicole’s run the gamut from Taylor Swift to the Cure. David’s inclusions span the likes of the Cranberries, Jack White, and the Johnnys, a Sydney pub rock band from the 1980s, plus a hit he and Jack both agree on: Doja Cat’s breathy Get Into It (Yuh).
The group blend feature on Spotify works algorithmically but allows you to create a shared playlist that fuses your mixes with those of your friends and family, resulting in a personalised listening session blended just for your group.
Their tastes may be, as Nicole says, “very different”. But this difference brings them together.
David says: “I think [music] creates a bit of good-natured ribbing or banter between each other.”
And for the James family, that is the greatest gift of all.
