Blog Up Musique, a new, online record label, is offering a free collection of lullabies for downloading. The project started when Faris Nourallah wrote a lullaby for Jerome Freiling's daughter as a birth gift. Jerome was inspired to encourage other artists to write lullabies and make them available for free. So far, he's got seventeen lullabies in the first album and is working on a second album. In addition to the music, you can download ten different album covers drawn by kids.

I checked with my nine- and eleven-year-old nieces -- they hadn't heard of any of these artists, and my fifteen-year-old, music-loving nephew has only heard of one band, "Let's Go Sailing". That doesn't mean, of course, that they aren't good, just that they haven't hit it big in America. Some of the tracks are actually quite nice. I started it playing this morning while the kids were asleep; Jared woke up during song #3 and exclaimed "I really like this music; this is my favorite song!" When the next song started, he added "I really like this song too!" I guess the music passes muster. The only caveat is that one of the bands has a name more suitable to an adult spam message than a group performing a kid's lullaby. Of course, you don't have to tell your kids the name of the group. Overall, this set contains some nice lullabies and you simply can't beat free.

If, on the other hand, you want lullabies from more well-known artists, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, and even the Beatles have all written lullabies or songs that easily could be. Our kids listen to a medley of Stevie Ray Vaughan, Billy Joel, and the Flirtations, among others at bedtime. What other music do you use to put your kids to bed? What other famous artists, not necessarily known for lullaby-type music have written lullabies?