Songs about domesticity, settling down, middle age, family life

I also have this daydream of proposing marriage by taking my gal for a drive down a road where I've laid out a succession of signs with Leonard Cohen lyrics:

Baby let's get married
We've been alone too long

Let's be alone together
Let's see if we're that strong

Let's do something crazy
Something absolutely wrong

While we're waiting for the miracle to come

and there was i hoping that this thread would be about the good side of domesticity and the contentment of settling down …

another one about the unattainable dream of settling down

gerry rafferty - "baker street"

Me and My Husband - Mitski

not a heartwarming story but Peter Gabriel's Home Sweet Home

sizeable chunks of the faun fables catalog

oh and wots... uh the deal by pink floyd

Skyhooks: "Balwyn Calling" and "All My Friends Are Getting Married"

Chuck Berry "You Never Can Tell", obv.

Also, most of Adem's "Homesongs" album. And John Martyn's "Sunday's Child"

always found the deployment of this line from blanche blanche blanche's uncrazy striking:

"I just want to take care of my wife and play basketball"

even before the pause and addition of "and get hit by a car"

Let's Move to the Country - Smog:

Let's move to the country
Just you and me

My travels are over
My travels are through

How have Pet Shop Boys not come up yet?

"climbing trees" by bauer, can't believe nobody has mentioned this one already

Lots of country songs

― F# A# (∞), Wednesday, October 24, 2018 8:14 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yesterday I was ambushed by unexpected emotion listening to George Jones and Tammy Wynette's "Two Story House" for the first time. What a sad song.

Last Time I Saw Richard: "Richard got married to a figure skater / and he bought her a dishwasher and a coffee percolator."

Michelle Shocked's "When I Grow Up", about settling down with "me, my old man, and 120 babies."

Nanko - Lucky You

When you reach home, you’re greeted with hugs and kisses
By your wife and your three lovely kids
Just to see your dinner on the table
Ain’t got nothing to worry about, you got your cable
Still got a young one coming up in the cradle
Damn, man, your life must be so stable
As for me, I’m unable, disabled, I’m like a fable

I'm not the cat I used to be
I got a kid, I'm thirty-three

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7rWf4tH-jE

If you learn to drive
I can use the train and the bus
When you're mobile, we'll go
Take my toys and your cat with us
We'll leave the violence
We'll have something to do
With a couch-bed in the front room
For when we fall out, or when our friends come through

It's painting a kitchen that's keeping me going
And we've already named the seeds I'll be sowing

And when they've grown up
That's hoping that I don't shoot blanks
Could we move right up north
Find a house near the shores and the banks?
With a big fuckoff telly
A brand new stereo system
We'll meet old friends at funerals
And pretend that we've missed them

And if they were here
They'd say it was shocking
To find we've already named the dog we'll be walking

It's choosing a mattress that's keeping me going
And we've already named the seeds I'll be sowing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PEMP-nIY1U

What would you say if I offered this all up
To move, like a wreck, to the Neuk?
With a room for your art, and a room for my tunes?
And a promise we both kept never to leave?

Just say the word...

You can't manufacture love
Build a flutter out of paper
Hoodwink my heart
Sure you wouldn't know where to start

So I
I can say without fear
Just catch my eye in a certain way
And we'll be out of here

Just say the word...

Pulp's Babies isn't right for this. Maybe Disco 2000

not sure i'd say this is about the happy side of domesticity but i love this song so I can't help posting it.

Kate & Anna McGarrigle - I Eat Dinner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb2x9uZVPek

Richard Shindell's song "A Summer Wind, a Cotton Dress" hits me pretty hard. It's the only relatable infidelity song I know of.

The kids are fine
They're six and nine
I think you'd probably like my wife
But the kitchen light
Seems much too bright
For what I find myself thinking tonight

"Don't Marry Her" has a reference to the sun shining on San Francisco Bay which always reminded me of the following story, but I've never come across this usage anywhere else:

In the late 1980s, Pickett recalled how he came by it: “Noreen Woods from Atlantic Records, she called me that one day because back in that time, the secretaries were wearing these miniskirts. One of these girls was leaning over the desk. On a clear day, you could see the San Francisco Bay. So I went and pinched her. Noreen saw it: she said, ‘My, my, you are so Wicked.’ Jerry Wexler ran out of his office. ‘That’s it baby, that’s it, that’s the name of his next album, baby. The Wicked Pickett, that’s it, put it down.’

Fletcher, Tony. In the Midnight Hour (p. 96). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

Vampire Weekend, "Stranger" feels nicely domestic - "Another night indoors, another sign of life, wobbling up through the floor."

Ray Davies - Quiet Life (from the movie Absolute Beginners)

As someone mentions above, it would take a while to list all the Davies songs on this theme, but The Kinks Present a Soap Opera is an entire album about it.